On May 9, 2024, the 79th anniversary of the Great Anti-Fascist Victory, the International Workers’ Institute (IWI) held the third seminar of its second cycle of trade union training on the ZOOM platform under the title: “Historical lessons from the USSR for the contemporary militant trade union movement”. More than 54 trade union leaders and militants from 29 countries around the world participated in this international virtual event, highlighting the historical legacy of the world’s first workers’ state for the contemporary trade union movement.
Comrade Edgar Marcote from Colombia, member of the Trade Union Education Committee of the IWI and member of the Presidential Council of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), gave the keynote address. Also, 31 comrades of the WFTU in Colombia participated in person in the conference room. In addition, comrade Pambis Kyritsis, General Secretary of the WFTU also addressed a greeting to the participants. You can find below the documents of the meeting as well as the presentations of the participants.
Key Note Speech
HISTORICAL LESSONS FROM THE USSR
FOR THE CONTEMPORARY CLASS-ORIENTED TRADE UNION MOVEMENT
INTRODUCTION – INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE USSR
On December 30, 2022 the centenary of the founding of the Soviet Union was commemorated; a historical event of universal repercussion for the workers of the entire world, which nevertheless went unnoticed, above all, for the young working class generation. Aware of this shortcoming, the International Workers’ Institute (IWI) considered it necessary to open a space to recapitulate and debate cardinal aspects of the experience of organization and struggle that was treasured in the course and creation of the USSR and the consequent construction of socialist society in it; in the understanding that the full knowledge of that experience remains essential for the revolutionary activity that advances today the class-oriented labor and trade union movement.
The formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics constituted an essential development of the historical-revolutionary turn that took place in the world arena of the class struggle since the triumph of the Great Socialist Revolution of October 1917. In particular, the USSR was the direct result of exceptional conditions fertilized by the Soviet policy of peace, bread and freedom proclaimed and developed by the young proletarian power in Russia and extended to the other republics of the Great State Union.
The Soviet Power introduced a new system of social and labor relations, based on collaboration and not on exploitation; in it, social security acquired universal coverage, the prices of essential products gradually decreased, the expenses on housing and public services were hardly perceptible and wages increased their purchasing power. In fact, the existence of the Soviet Union and the building of socialism had an impact far beyond Russia’s borders. The nascent Republic of workers and peasants received the united support of the democratic and revolutionary forces of all countries, which frustrated the attempts of internal and external reaction to strangle it. In turn, the Soviet Power -under the leadership of the Bolshevik Communist Party- offered broad solidarity to those who required it, promoted the policy of peace among the workers and instilled the spirit of fraternity and collaboration among nations, under the principle of self-determination.
The USSR became the Mecca of world socialism. Hundreds of thousands of workers from different origins went there to witness the prodigious transformations that were taking place in favor of the welfare of the working people. The portentous technical-scientific base created by the working class and the cooperativist peasantry dignified working women, children, the elderly and the underprivileged; but its scope was broader: it ensured the material and cultural welfare never before enjoyed by the working majorities of the country. The USSR deservedly held the title of world pioneer in the eradication of hunger, unemployment, illiteracy and other scourges inherited from capitalism.
Another transcendental achievement was the recognition and enjoyment of full rights to the secularly oppressed nations that joined the Union; they participated in the construction of socialism and enjoyed its colossal advances. The creation of the Nationalities Soviet brought the national minorities to a leading position in the administration of the multinational state. Such an accumulation of advances and conquests were endorsed by the Political Constitution of 1935 -corollary of socialist democracy.
The authority and prestige of the USSR -based on self-sacrificing work- earned it the honorable role of bastion of the international class-oriented labor, communist and trade union movement. The political and military prowess of the Soviet State left its heroic mark during the Great Patriotic War, which in addition to the defeat of the fascist invader, contributed to the liberation of other countries occupied by the Nazi boot and saved humanity from Hitlerite slavery. Today, May 9th, by means of this Symposium, the International Workers’ Institute pays tribute to that Soviet victory sealed 79 years ago. A well-deserved tribute to the Red Army, the Soviet State, the Bolshevik Communist Party and all the peoples and organizations that with courage and sacrifice forged this emancipating deed.
No less important is the feat of the Soviet people in restoring in only three years the colossal infrastructure of the Great Country devastated by the Hitlerite invaders; and, at the same time, the Soviet support for the vigorous national liberation struggle of the colonial and dependent peoples of imperialism. The formation of the International Camp of Socialism and Popular Democracy, whose axis and central motor was the USSR, is also of great significance.
The titanic work of the Soviet workers -with their Bolshevik political vanguard at the forefront- demonstrated the superiority of the young rising socialist system over the decrepit and moribund capitalist system of exploitation.
In relation to the period of regression that from 1953 onwards was registered in the state and party leadership of the Great Soviet Country it can be said that it opened the floodgates to the silent counterrevolution, propitiated the gradual undermining of the Soviet Power and encouraged the dirty campaign of defamation against the Fatherland of Lenin and Stalin; However, due to the deep and solid roots planted by Soviet socialism, the counterrevolution could not dismantle the achievements that for three more decades continued in the exploration of the cosmos, atomic energy, education, the arts, culture, sports, etc.
In spite of everything, the priceless Soviet heritage was finally squandered by the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie who, through their agents of social democratic perestroika, dismembered the USSR and are now proceeding to destroy every vestige of that immortal work.
Finally, in the course of the exercise of historical memory promoted by the International Workers Institute for this Symposium, we will try to synthesize some cardinal experiences of struggle and organization condensed in the portentous work of the Great Country of the Soviets.
LESSON 1
THE SPIRIT OF PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM IS FORGED IN THE COURSE OF THE UNITED AND SOLIDARY WORKERS’ STRUGGLE
At the beginning of the 20th century the Russian empire ruled by the monarchic dynasty of the tsars was considered a living hell for the peasants, an industrial barracks for the workers and a prison of peoples, mainly for the non-Russian nations and national minorities.
According to the 1897 census, more than half of the country’s territory was inhabited by about 150 non-Russian communities, among nations, nationalities and a few tribes; all subjected to the process of ‘Russification’, under the yoke of the feudal serfdom regime (although it had been abolished in 1861), subject to the tyranny and arbitrariness of military and popes; Moreover, obliged to give increasing contributions in rent for the crown and the great landowners and as recruits who swelled the royal army as cannon fodder in the constant warlike adventures of the ‘nobles’. Some of the varied noble titles of the Russian tsar gave a glimpse of the extent of the territorial domains: tsar of Poland, Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia, grand prince of Finland, Smolensk, Lithuania, etc.
The despotic forms of government of the tsarist regime did not differ from those employed by the rest of the colonialist monarchies and metropolises. The ‘peripheral’ peoples were subjected to relentless exploitation, oppression and deprived of even the most elementary rights and liberties; they were stirred up among themselves to create discord and keep them divided. Tsarism kept these regions in economic and social backwardness, illiteracy and misery, condemning them in fact to the condition of colonies, suppliers of raw materials required by the nascent industries located in Russian cities.
The vertiginous development of capitalism in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century had an impact on the working masses, both Russian and of other nations and nationalities. The peasantry, which then constituted 90% of the population, began to experience a process of social disintegration due to migration to the cities, land dispossession by landowners, proletarianization and impoverishment due to the acute backwardness of agriculture. The peasant mass was rapidly declining as a class. On the contrary, the proletariat increased numerically, organized itself in guilds, demanded labor improvements and mobilized permanently for political freedoms. This was attested to by the vigorous and growing strike movement that began in 1896 and was withdrawn at the end of 1905.
On the other hand, the influx of foreign capital into Russia in the form of loans and investments in oil, mining, industry and agriculture activated proletarianization and helped to awaken national sentiments among the peoples of the ‘periphery’. The national movements were encouraged on the one hand by the bourgeoisie, which saw them as its political reserve and instilled chauvinism in them; and on the other hand by the proletariat, which linked them as allies in both trade union and political struggle.
In each relevant struggle, the Bolsheviks instilled in the workers of the various nations and nationalities the spirit of unity, internationalism and fraternity; they showed them that the conquests in the labor field benefited all the workers, without discrimination based on their national origin, such was the case of the first collective agreement signed in the country as a result of the strike of the oil workers which broke out in December 1904 in Baku.
They also urged them to carry the flag of proletarian internationalism during the general strikes for democratic freedoms.
In the scenario of the class struggle of the historic revolutionary year of 1905, various objective and subjective factors converged which helped the economic, political and cultural awakening of the national minorities, among them: the rapid development of capitalism in Russia, the Russo-Japanese war, the unprecedented strike wave (where solidarity strikes and general political strikes stand out); especially the insurrectionary movement of the workers and soldiers; arna of the class struggle were for some time the sessions of a mock Constitutional Duma convened by the tsar to prevent new armed uprisings. All this influenced the emergence in the peripheral regions of two opposing tendencies: on the one hand, bourgeois nationalism, insufflated by local capitalists and landowners; and, on the other hand, the proletarian internationalist spirit of solidarity, promoted at that time by the Bolshevik fraction of the RSDLP.
The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations of Russia advocated -above all- the formation of independent national states, which in the multinational state of the tsars would sooner or later translate into separatism. On the contrary, the Leninists, while recognizing the right of nations to create their own national state, also advocated the right of those same nations to integrate freely and voluntarily into a binational or multinational state structure, based on equal rights and mutual benefit. Years later it would become clear that the cornerstone of the internationalist policy of the All-Russian Bolsheviks was the recognition and implementation of the principle of national self-determination.
In 1914 an unexpected event occurred which was to change the course of events for the peoples of Russia and the peoples of the world as a whole: the outbreak of the First Imperialist World War. A tragic and unexpected event that unfortunately fractured the world labor movement into two opposing camps.
In the camp of the traitors to the workers’ cause were the right-wing and centrist social-democratic parties and leaders of the Second International, who – spitting on the internationalist program they had sworn to defend – joined the side of their respective ‘national’ bourgeoisies, encouraged the workers of their countries to agree to a truce in the class struggle with ‘their’ capitalists (the so-called ‘social peace’) and to kill each other on the battlefields with the workers of other nations so that the profits of ‘their’ capitalists could grow. On the opposite shore, the Bolsheviks of the Communist Party of Russia stood in front and almost isolated; fighting against the general current of national chauvinism, unveiling the imperialist character of that reactionary war, denouncing the criminal treason of the leadership of the Second International and -in a firm exercise of proletarian internationalism- encouraging the workers and peasants to transform the imperialist war of rapine into a revolutionary civil war; to overthrow the bourgeoisies of their countries and to establish the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, to establish the state power of the workers and peasants.
There could not and could not be any intermediate line between the bourgeois pacifism of social democracy and the communist mass struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeois power and its revolutionary replacement by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
LESSON 2
EXCEPT FOR POWER, ALL IS ILLUSION
Neither parliamentarism, nor co-government with the bourgeoisie. Revolution and Proletarian Power
It is true that the general slogan of transforming the imperialist war into revolutionary civil war was elaborated and agitated by the Bolsheviks since the outbreak of the war. However, it should not be forgotten that the slogan of the overthrow of the European bourgeoisie and the tsarist regime was an old objective enshrined in the programs of the revolutionary socialist and social democratic parties of various countries. But, to whom was it now up to carry those banners to the end, if the social democracy lowered them and joined in the defense of the ‘fatherland’ of its bourgeoisies?
In order to resolve this question it is worth remembering that the formation of the revolutionary political parties in Russia and their relationship with the trade unions differed radically -both in form and content- from the process which took place in Western Europe. In the latter, the socialist and social democratic parties were formed in bondage and dependence on the trade-unionist and conciliatory unions with the bosses, which left a reformist imprint on these parties, collaborationist practices with capital and an inordinate taste for bourgeois parliamentarism. In Russia, on the contrary, there was a premature awakening to the revolutionary political struggle and Marxist political groupings were formed before strong organizations coalesced, so that these groupings exercised a decisive ideological and political influence on the trade unions. As a result of the early theoretical elaboration, the rapid awakening to the political struggle and the close and permanent link with the rising workers’ trade union movement, the Marxist organizations succeeded in giving the struggle of the trade unions a revolutionary stamp, leading it along the path of the class struggle, instilling in it the spirit of solidarity and proletarian internationalism and setting as its goal the overthrow of tsarism, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialist construction.
Among the multiple currents and revolutionary political groupings in Russia that arose at the end of the 19th century, when the development of industrial capitalism was bursting forth and a strong and growing mass workers’ movement was born to the class struggle, a group of revolutionary Marxists led by Lenin stood out, which in 1898 would join the early formation of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). This Bolshevik fraction would exercise the determining role in the development within the RSDLP, until forced by the demands of the class struggle it was constituted in 1912 in the independent and revolutionary political party of the working class, in the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Russia, since then leading force of the proletarian revolution.
First as a revolutionary proletarian current and then as a majority fraction of the RSDLP, but above all because of the clarity of its line, the perspicacity of its leaders and the close ties with the working masses, it corresponded to this Bolshevik-Leninist forces to propitiate and settle the ideological, political, programmatic and organizational demarcation with the proletarian revolution, political, programmatic and organizational with the populist, anarchist, economist and Menshevik tendencies which with their opportunist practices and their anti-Marxist theses tried to move away or divert the proletariat from the revolutionary road and leave it as an appendix of the bourgeoisie. We refer to opportunist theses and practices such as that of the peasant vanguard, individual terror, the renunciation of the proletariat and the individual terror, the renunciation of the proletariat to the political struggle or to the leadership of the revolutionary process in progress.
Armed with the scientific theory of scientific socialism and based on the rigorous study of the socio-economic and political formation of the tsarist regime and the development of capitalism in Russia, the Bolsheviks -with Lenin at the head- elaborated and defended the minimum and maximum program of the Russian revolution, established the policy of alliance with the poor peasantry and fixed the main strategic direction for each phase of the revolution; analyzed and discovered the most diverse forms of struggle and organization in the course of the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and the peasantry against the forces of reaction.
For the rapid, solid and unceasing advance of the revolutionary process the experience of struggle in the year 1905 was especially profitable. A vigorous and unprecedented mass workers’ strike movement (economic strikes, solidarity strikes and general political strikes) opened up, which gave rise to the appearance of the Soviets: the assembly organizational form -by then embryonic- discovered by the working masses themselves as the nucleus and motor of the armed insurrection and of the exercise of worker-peasant state political power (not reduced to the “administration of the public thing”, as the form of government was usually characterized at the time).
The defeat of the armed insurrection of 1905 led to the temporary dissolution of the Soviets and the forced retreat of the revolutionary movement; In these conditions, for the first time the Bolsheviks decided to participate in the Constitutional Duma, but not in order to enter into the shady dealings, debates or parliamentary compromises with the representatives of the bourgeoisie, but to use it as a tribune of political denunciation, a field of public demarcation against the opportunist positions of the bourgeoisie, a space of encounter with the peasantry and of rapprochement with the national minorities when it was urgent to move them away from national chauvinism. In short, they participated there to remove the masses of workers and peasants from the pernicious influence of parliamentarism and from any illusion of co-government with the bourgeoisie; to demonstrate from then on in all the spaces of mass struggle that except for the power for the proletariat and the peasantry everything is illusion.
It remains to clarify that the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, those forms of organization and mass struggle discovered in the class struggles of 1905, under the leadership of Leninism, would play the central role in the overthrow of the tsarist regime, in the establishment of the bourgeois-democratic provisional government in February 1917 and with greater weight, energy and coverage in the overthrow of the bourgeois government and the establishment of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat in October of the same year, as it would later play in the construction of socialism.
LESSON 3
THE REDEMPTION OF THE WORKING CLASS, THE WORK OF THE WORKING CLASS ITSELF
From internationalist solidarity to the Internationalist Union
On October 25, 1917 -eight months after having deposed the tsar- the proletariat of Russia overthrew the provisional government of the bourgeoisie. Under the Leninist directive: all power to the Soviets, on the same day the revolutionary power of the proletariat was established, which at the same time meant the beginning of the dismantling of the structures of the outdated and oppressive political power not only of the two-headed eagle, but of all the exploiting classes.
One day later the structures of the new state power began to be established, based on the system of Soviets of the republics, autonomous and peripheral regions; representative bodies with which the mass organizations of the workers such as the trade unions and factory committees worked in coordination. The Bolshevik Communist Party maintained its role as the leading force of the working class, now in the exercise of political power, together with its natural ally the poor peasantry.
The supreme organ of the new state power became the Congress of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. Between Congresses, the Central Executive Committee and the People’s Commissariat assumed their legislative functions in a coordinated manner. This organ of the apparatus of power proved to be very dynamic and effective in overcoming the two main scourges facing the dictatorship of the proletariat: getting out of the war and solving the problem of hunger that burdened the population as a whole. The People’s Commissariat not only maintained direct links with the masses of workers and peasants through its activity fronts (Military Affairs, Food, Labor, Women, Nationalities, etc.), it could also issue orders and directives in the field. On that basis he placed himself at the head of the Soviet army to fight and crush the armed counterrevolution and, at the same time, he contributed to negotiate peace agreements with the countries confronting Russia, creating a favorable climate for the urgent economic recovery of the country.
In order to free the working people from the yoke of capitalist and latifundist exploitation and to promote the transformations required by the country, the Third Congress of the Soviets promulgated in February 1918 the Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People, which decreed the nationalization of the banks and the confiscation of large enterprises, mass media and transportation, infrastructure and natural resources. The confiscated lands were distributed among the peasantry and the State. Work was made obligatory for all inhabitants, thus putting an end to the parasitic classes. The general working day of 8 hours a day was decreed, the creation of an integral and universal system of social security (housing, health, pensions, education, recreation and culture) was approved, the legal equality of women was recognized and guarantees were provided for its real exercise; the free fraternal union of nations was instituted, forming the Federation of National Republics of Soviets. This, among many other norms and institutions of the new state power of the dictatorship of the proletariat, was established.
On the other hand, the measures for the restoration of the economy were obstructed by the armed actions of the counterrevolution and foreign intervention. The proletarian state was then forced to allocate for the defense of the revolution and the country.
Imperialism and its henchmen tightened the economic-financial and technical-scientific blockade from the very moment of the birth of the Soviet Power; additionally, they raised a diplomatic siege to politically and culturally isolate the country from the proletarian dictatorship. The capitalist powers triumphant in the imperialist war were not satisfied with the territorial distribution and the ‘war reparations’ imposed in the lionized Treaty of Versailles and the San Remo Conference: they longed to destroy Soviet power, to seize the immeasurable patrimony of the great country, to reimpose the regime of exploitation and restore their colonial domination by means of new territorial annexations.
The broad international solidarity of the workers of the world with the Soviet State proved to be an essential factor in counteracting the capitalist encirclement. An incessant stream of leaders and rank-and-file members of workers’ and peasants’ parties and trade union organizations, social scientists and revolutionary intellectuals from all corners of the planet made a pilgrimage to the mecca of world socialism to witness the process of transformations and contribute their grain of solidarity to the defense of the nascent socialist homeland. Reciprocal solidarity action that fueled the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and national liberation movements at the time of the proletarian revolutions.
As part of that exceptional solidarity action was founded in 1919 in Moscow the Communist International (III International), center of formation and coordination of the struggle of the communist parties and movements of the working class; in 1921 the Red Trade Union International (RILU) was formed, also as part of the process of regroupment initiated by Lenin in 1915, which would be joined by international organizations of Youth and Women.
With the crushing of the armed counterrevolution and the signing of peace agreements with some countries, communism passed from war communism to the New Economic Policy; a truce to undertake a thorough economic revival. The creation of the Red Army and the formation of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) – ratified by the 1922 constitution – cleared the way for the advent of the USSR, which materialized on December 30, 1922. The multinational and fraternal State Union was born, in which the RSFSR, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) took part as founding members. In the short term, 4 Asian republics would be added and by 1945 there would be 15 republics in the Great Soviet State Union.
The official Declaration of the formation of the USSR in its motivating part defines the opposite nature of the system of relations between nations under capitalism and in the socialist society. To the letter it is expressed in the Declaration:
“There, in the camp of capitalism, there prevails enmity and inequality between nations, colonial slavery and chauvinism, national oppression and pogroms, imperialist ferocities and wars. “There, in the camp of capitalism, there reigns enmity and inequality between nations, colonial slavery and chauvinism, national oppression and pogroms, imperialist ferocities and wars.
Here, in the camp of socialism, we have mutual trust and peace, freedom and equality of nations, peaceful coexistence and fraternal collaboration of peoples.”
Lesson 4
THERE IS NO FORTRESS THAT THE WORKING CLASS CANNOT SEIZE
The creative force of the workers and their Party: achievements and feats of socialism.
The architects of the socialist construction in the USSR -V.I. Lenin and J.V. Stalin- were clear that for the workers and their Party to be able to build socialism, they had to be able to do so. Stalin- were clear that in order to undertake and successfully crown that titanic work of the economic-social development of the country of the Soviets it was essential the confluence of at least four decisive factors, namely: 1) to have a thorough knowledge of the objective laws governing the development of the socialist mode of production, 2) to have abundant natural and energy resources, 3) to have personnel with sufficient technical and scientific training capable of putting into operation and controlling all the levers and potentialities of large-scale industrial production and 4) to place at the head of the project cadres with organizational and leadership skills, capable of guiding the process of transformations to the point of awakening and deploying with full force the creative energy of the working masses.
Lenin and Stalin discovered and formulated, among others, the law of economic and proportional development of the economy in the socialist mode of production, which allowed the Soviet leadership to find in centralized planning the central link in the chain to undertake the construction of the new society. From this emerged the Leninist directive to build a complex and advanced system of hydroelectric power plants – 170 large generators in less than 10 years – which would serve as the driving force to leverage a modern and large-scale heavy industry.
As for the natural resources needed, the country possessed them in abundant quantity and great diversity (minerals, energy, forestry, marine, etc.); but important investments and sufficient technical and scientific knowledge were required to ensure their rational exploitation with a view to covering the needs of industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture: pillars of the revolutionary transformation of the social-economic structure of the great Soviet country.
The main bottleneck was the lack of technical and scientific personnel and specialists in modern heavy industry. There was hardly any accumulated experience in iron and steel and basic metallurgy; and to a lesser extent in energy exploitation. In the mid-1920s, the scale production of tools, machinery and industrial equipment was non-existent. The industrial boycott of capitalist reaction was another factor adverse to Soviet industrialization plans.
The successful electrification plan devised by Lenin served as a laboratory for the creation and operation of the National Economic Planning Commission (GOSPLAN), responsible for designing, controlling and implementing first the annual development plans and then the famous and very effective five-year plans; thanks to which were forged the prodigious economic, social, political, labor, scientific, technical, cultural, artistic and moral advances that raised the material and spiritual standard of living of Soviet workers, turned the USSR into a first-rate industrial and agricultural power and increased its prestige and authority at the national and international level.
To have a precise idea of the astonishing results of centralized planning, it would suffice to say that in the first five-year plan (1927-1932) 4,500 giant industrial enterprises were built, of which 1,500 were in the first five-year plan (1927-1932) of which 1,500 were complexes in which tractor and automobile factories, large steel mills, etc., stood out.
It would be precisely in the course of the growing and uninterrupted process of industrialization and culturalization of the USSR that appeared on the scene – and it could not be otherwise – a socio-labor factor that from the foundations to the head would revolutionize the productive system of the Soviet society: the SOCIALIST EMULATION. It was a creative and revolutionary movement invented by the working masses themselves within the centers of production and aimed at continuously raising the productivity of labor. In the course of this enthusiastic and massive movement of socialist emulation – based not on competition, but on the creative initiative and the overwhelming example of labor, especially collective labor – the factories, the kolkhozes, the sovkhozes, the trade unions and, in general, every labor organization, and social organization proceeded to innovate the methods of work, to perfect the means of production, to introduce new raw materials and, in short, to revolutionize everything in order to achieve the goals set out in the five-year plans, even before the dates set. No labor group was left out of the sweeping and enthusiastic emulator movement: embryo and seedbed of Heroes of Socialist Labor.
This great movement, which was nothing other than the empowerment of the social productive force appropriated by the capitalists without remuneration, stirred up the entrails of Soviet society, causing the raising of its standard of living, increasing the purchasing power of wages, reducing the prices of goods and the working day. By extension, it opened the way to a true scientific, artistic and cultural revolution. The creativity of the masses of workers and peasants was replicated in the educational system, in research academies, in sports centers, in women’s, youth and pioneer organizations; it also impacted with great force the multiple expressions of socialist realism. Under these circumstances hunger, unemployment, illiteracy and other scourges inherited from capitalism became in the USSR bad memories of the past.
In accordance with the sweeping wave of socialist progress, each “assault” and each conquest strengthened socialist state property, reduced the sphere of action of mercantile relations and, therefore, dealt a lethal blow to the old structures and relations of exploitation, at the same time as it ensured the complete liquidation of the exploiting classes in the country.
The portentous creative work of the land of the Soviets evidenced the historical superiority of the socialist system over the capitalist system. The Stalinist Constitution promulgated in 1935 endorsed these epic conquests and a year later the Soviet Power declared the construction of the socialist society finished and announced the beginning of the construction of communism in the USSR. This announcement was shocking and reckless for the reactionary forces led by Anglo-American imperialism; from that moment on, they opted for the path of military invasion of the USSR, drawing from their sleeve the card of barbaric fascist aggression against the bulwark of the world proletarian revolution: the Soviet Union.
LESSON 5
THE DEFENSE OF THE SOCIALIST FATHERLAND IS THE MOST SACRED DUTY
All for the front, all for victory
On June 22, 1941, the Hitlerite hordes invaded the territory of the USSR in a light-hearted and arrogant manner. By means of a monstrous war machine and an unbridled soldiery, the Nazi-fascist command had proposed to overthrow the Soviet power in two or three months, to appropriate the great patrimony of the vast country and to establish a concentration camp where 120 million workers would be enslaved and exploited: Moreover, according to the feverish calculations of the invaders, the conquest and subjugation of the “barbarian peoples” would be only the starting point for the establishment of the empire of a thousand years, ruled by the German-fascist bourgeoisie.
In fact, the imperialist preparations to storm and crush the Soviet fortress and destroy the USSR were neither new nor improvised. In fact, faced with the failure of the foreign armed intervention, the economic-financial and diplomatic encirclement or the industrial and cultural boycott against the Soviet Union, the international financial oligarchy implements a more regressive and inhuman form of government: fascism. From 1923 onwards the fascist regimes act as the spearhead of monopoly capital to crush the wave of proletarian revolutions and the liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples. But, above all, the forces of world reaction were seeking a way to demolish the USSR, the bulwark of socialism: focus and beacon of the workers’ and communist movement, as well as of the revolutionary movement of national liberation and anti-colonialism.
The Soviet announcement of the beginning of the construction of communist society in the USSR generated such concern among the great magnates of capital that the alarmism was capitalized by the Anglo-French oligarchy to create a new entente, this time anti-Soviet. To this end, this imperialist faction signed the Munich Pact with Nazi Germany in 1938, instilled greater anti-communism and anti-Sovietism in the Hitlerite command, gave it vital information on the USSR and helped to equip the Nazi beast with sufficient funds to perpetrate a “lightning” and large-scale attack. Similar deals were promoted by U.S. imperialism with a view to liquidating the USSR with foreign hands. Today the ‘contribution’ of General Motors to the rearmament of German fascism is known.
Contrary to the versions of imperialism and revisionism, the leadership of the CPB and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR took seriously the blatant preparations for armed aggression; but they rejected the idea of the USSR attacking Hitler’s Germany first, on the understanding that it was a provocation aimed at making the USSR appear as an aggressor country, which would activate the anti-Soviet pact of Munich. In order to gain time and to be able to prepare an adequate defense, in 1939 the Soviet command promoted and signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, even though it knew that Hitler’s colonial appetites would break the agreement at any moment.
The fact that Hitlerism formed a fascist aggressive coalition with the governments of Italy, Spain, Turkey, Hungary and Bulgaria, among others, and that it had militarily occupied some nations of Western Europe, frustrated the calculations of Anglo-French-American monopoly capital and forced this trio to form an anti-fascist war front with the USSR. This is the reason why we speak of the double character of the Second World War: an imperialist fascist aggressor bloc, and an anti-fascist front.
The unfolding of the military operations are widely known, but they could be summarized as follows: the Nazi troops with their overwhelming military equipment and armed divisions trained in the previous wars of occupation proceeded to raze, devastate, murder and overwhelm everything in their path, in the hope that in two or three months from the beginning of the invasion they would have under their boot the control of the European part of the Soviet Union. The rapid advance of the invaders in the first days of the war incursion made them believe in such a fantasy; but, the triumph of the “blitzkrieg” so much vaunted by Hitler and his henchmen did not see the light of day; This was thanks to the strategy of the Military Defense Committee of the Soviet Union, to the rapid general mobilization of the peoples of the USSR (including its volunteer armies), to the heroic resistance of the partisans, to the prowess of the Soviet Army, Navy and Air Force, to the work of the espionage and counter-espionage organizations, as well as to the courageous efforts of women, old people, adults and children of all nationalities, both in the countryside and in the city, through their political, social and trade organizations in the various fronts of activity: ideological, political, labor, scientific, cultural….
The pages of struggle and sacrifice written by the peoples of the USSR, together with other detachments of workers and peoples of the world, to defeat the Nazi beast are glorious and infinite. We can recall among them: the heroic resistance and breaking of the criminal siege imposed on Leningrad, the Battle of Moscow and the Battle of Kursk: but among them all still illuminates the BATTLE OF STALINGRAD: victorious and unparalleled feat of the Red Army and the Soviet peoples. A feat that had its successful conclusion on February 2, 1943 and which marked the definitive turning point of the war for the triumph of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. The wise directive of the monolithic communist command of the USSR: All for the Front, All for Victory, had borne fruit.
No less memorable was the performance of the Red Army as the liberating force of the peoples and countries of Eastern Europe; nor was anything more meritorious than the honor of having been the detachment which with its unparalleled effort led to the capitulation of the Hitlerite beast on May 9, 1945, a few days after having waved the red flag of the hammer and sickle in the Reichstag in the city of Berlin. The USSR was also justly accorded the honor of having defeated Japanese militarism.
Of course, the authority and prestige of the USSR transcended its borders. At the end of the Second World War, the International Camp of Socialism and People’s Democracy was formed, which was joined by Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania and other European countries. The results of the great war further broke the colonial system of imperialism; the Chinese revolution and the awakening of the Arab, Asian and African national liberation movement to struggle were also proof of this.
The workers, peasants and the Soviet intelligentsia had not only forged a Great Socialist Fatherland, but they had also honored it, defended it and at the end of the war hostilities they should proceed to its reconstruction.
LESSON 6
WOLVES ARE NOT PREACHED MORALITY, THEY ARE FOUGHT.
Economic reconstruction and the struggle against bourgeois cosmopolitanism
The most important result of the Second World War was the formation of the International Camp of Socialism and People’s Democracy, from the linking of the majority of Eastern European countries to the system of relations led by the USSR; a pioneering process of internationalist unity to which was added the disintegration of the colonial system of imperialism, crowned in 1949 with the Chinese Revolution and the liberation of the northern territory of Korea from foreign occupation. In that new correlation of forces and by initiative of the Soviet Council of Trade Unions and the British trade-unions, the World Federation of Trade Unions emerged as the only revolutionary aggregation of the working class.
In that context and to prevent the forces of proletarian revolution to implant their power in the countries of Western Europe, U.S. imperialism imposed on that region a colonial yoke, called the Marshall Plan for reconstruction. The U.S. government also tried to subdue the USSR with a “financing” plan.
The economic and social reconstruction of the Soviet country turned out to be a titanic ‘enterprise’, due to the level of devastation caused by the Hitlerian pack and the high toll in lives of the defenders of the Fatherland, which according to official figures at that time reached 13 million Soviets. Many cities and rural areas had to be reconstructed: housing, roads, production and transport infrastructure, etc.
But once again, the great material wounds of the war were healed in just three years. Such a prodigy was achieved by the dedication and discipline of the working people; the foresighted Soviet strategy of moving the industrial complexes to the East at the beginning of the fascist invasion and then restoring them to resume the production of goods for popular consumption and the provision of basic services also contributed. In addition, there was a rapid revival in the scientific and technical sphere; not only in obtaining and multiplying grain crops; thousands of discoveries and innovations were then achieved.
Outstanding were the advances in military defense; they helped to neutralize the U.S. atomic blackmail and placed the USSR at the head of space exploration. The country’s science academies were strengthened in terms of infrastructure, personnel, budget and research effectiveness. In 1948 the standard of living of the general population improved. Emulation, cooperation and economic complementation expanded its borders, establishing relations with the countries of the World Camp of Socialism.
In that same period, the Soviet communist leadership detected repeated reactionary bourgeois expressions in the work of cultural institutions (theater, painting, sculpture, dance, etc.), as well as in some fields of social sciences (philosophy and psychology), in addition to the leakage abroad of information on scientific advances. A special Commission headed by Zhdanov followed up and found that they were being permeated by formalism and bourgeois cosmopolitanism, which annulled the humanistic and patriotic values of socialism and replaced them with mercantilism, individualism and globalism. In order to restore proletarian science and socialist realism to the seat of history, a cultural revolution was undertaken. The battle began in the ideological and cultural sphere; it did not take long for it to the arena of economics and international relations. Dual nationality, which allowed trafficking in the heritage of the USSR and undermined its legal, political and territorial sovereignty, was challenged.
In October 1952 the Comintern denounced the criminal actions of the Zionist conspiracy center against the socialist states; and declared Zionism as the number one enemy of the Soviet Union, of the workers and communist movement, and of the peoples of the world. A month later the XIX Congress of the Bolshevik Communist Party met and then at the Party Plenum, Stalin accused several leaders of serving Zionist organizations against the interests of the Soviet State. On January 13, 1953, the Soviet news agency TASS denounced the plot of the “white-coat” assassins: it revealed that a band of Jewish doctors in the service of the “joint” were arrested and confessed to having killed Zhdanov, Scherbakov and many other Communist leaders with counter-indicated lethal treatment.
A general campaign against the “Zionist plague” was unleashed. At the beginning of February 1953 terrorists planted a bomb in the diplomatic headquarters of the USSR in the Zionist colonial entity (“Israel”), which led to the severance of relations. The last foreigner alive and well to see Stalin was the Indian ambassador, five days before he was imprisoned, tortured and surgically assassinated by a group of Kremlin “doctors” and some leaders of the CPSU denounced in the aforementioned Plenum. Hundreds of Leninist leaders were also disappeared, arrested and/or assassinated, among them: Clement Gotwald, president of the Republic of Czechoslovakia and Lavrenti Beria, Chief of the Soviet State Security and responsible for the atomic program of the USSR. And the white-coated assassins were rehabilitated.
The subsequent counterrevolutionary thermidor was at the expense of Khrushchev, who took control of the State and Party apparatus: he altered the program, weakened the structures of collective agriculture, prioritized peaceful coexistence with imperialism and spread all kinds of slander against the Father of the Soviet Peoples and his followers. The 1977 Constitution de-vertebrated planning in state enterprises by granting them administrative, financial and budgetary autonomy. The deep roots and strong trunk of the Soviet society allowed for new achievements in different areas, until 1987, when the counterrevolutionary machinery of the social-democratic perestroika led the country to economic prostration, social marasmus, the forced disintegration of the great Soviet Union, the dismantling of the Soviet socialist and the plundering of its patrimony. In short, to capitalist restoration. Today, Putin-Mevdeved, together with the now billionaire Zionist Vladimir Zelensky destroy the portentous Soviet industrial, civil and military infrastructure; defame, misrepresent or conceal the grandiose history of the USSR. They not only demolish statues; they replace the hammer and sickle with the double-headed eagle.
It is up to the new generations of Leninists today – especially in the territory of the former Soviet Union – to continue and crown the task of their predecessors, to save the honor of Lenin and Stalin’s generation of Heroes of Labor and Defenders of the Socialist Fatherland.
Such is the inspiration of the present writing, in which a chapter entitled: THE DEFAMATION AGAINST SOCIALISM MUST NOT BE TOLLED, paraphrasing the call made in Pyong Yang by the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea -Kim Jon Il- at the International Meeting of Communist and Revolutionary Parties in 1992.
Intervention of the WFTU Secretary General, Pambis Kyritsis
Dear comrades,
On behalf of the World Federation of Trade Unions, let me congratulate the International Workers Institute for the initiative of organizing this very useful webinar. The selected topic, and the discussion that will take place, is helpful and of great relevance for the contemporary militant trade union movement.
In addition, the date of the webinar, is not at all random. On this day, May 9, 1945, the Soviet Union has given humanity another important legacy: 79 years ago, the victory of the peoples over Nazism, with the USSR and the Soviet Army in the vanguard, was accompanied by a new air of hope and optimism for a better world, without wars and disasters, without racial or other discrimination, free of exploitation and social injustice, and without colonialism and national oppression.
The foundation of the World Federation of Trade Unions, had also been a child of the great antifascist victory of the peoples.
Dear comrades,
The achievements of the first workers’ state in the history of mankind, the Soviet Union which was built and supported by the workers are an inspiration for the contemporary militant trade union movement.
It was the socialist revolution of October 1917 that brought to the fore issues such as the matter of true democracy, adopting forms of administration with direct democracy, with recallable officials accountable to and committed to the workers, the matter of self-management and cooperatives, the question of gender equality, religious tolerance and respect for individual liberties. The matter of the self-determination of nations and the condemnation of colonial oppression. The matter of peace and the need for the workers of the whole world to unite to fight the imperialism that is born by the system and not to become meat in the cannons of the militarists.
Which opened the way for a new model of social organization, where there will be no upper-class and lower-class people, no exploiters and exploited and the social good will prevail over the narrow individual or group interests.
It gave a huge boost to the new and the progressive, to the development of science and culture, sports and, in general, to healthy activity, and the creative use of leisure time.
It is true that this vitality and this revolutionary and creative spirit did not remain constant and dominant throughout the entire course of the Soviet state’s existence. Unfortunately, there were also distortions, there were also phenomena alien to the spirit and characteristics of a workers’ state.
There were also attitudes which gave weapons to the enemies of the working class in their unremitting and fierce war against the first workers’ state in the world.
But neither deviations and dogmatisms, nor distortions and unacceptable behaviors can diminish, much less nullify, the contribution and greatness that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has made to the development of human society.
Besides, it is obvious that the absence of the Soviet Union from world developments has not only not made the world a better place, as the imperialists were quick to discount at the time of their celebrations of the end of history, but absolutely the opposite.
Wars and conflicts have multiplied and the world is now closer than ever to a global nuclear catastrophe, the environment is going through its worst crisis, the accumulation of wealth for the few and at the same time poverty and misery for the many has reached unbelievable levels, with the result the caravans of refugees and the persecuted have now flooded the entire planet.
Today, the working class is suffering from the generalization and deepening of the capitalist crisis, the dramatic widening of social inequalities, and the new and harsh attacks on democratic and trade union freedoms. Only the workers can free their class from the dynasty and barbarism of its exploiters. Through their organization, their militancy, their decisiveness and their struggles. The WFTU has always been and will continue to be at the forefront of these struggles.
Once again, I hope today’s webinar to be productive and fruitful, to contribute to the ideological and political education and empowerment of the trade unionists who will participate.
Thank you again.
Intervention by Vassilis Opsimos (Center for Marxist Research – Greece)
The report of comrade Marcote outlined the monumental achievements of socialist contruction in the Soviet Union for the working masses of the Soviet people, and not just for the privileged social classes as is the case under capitalism. I would like to talk about two fundamental issues.
How was socialism capable of achieving these successes, despite the fact that its construction first started in a country where the development of the productive forces was not that high? A short (and correct) answer could be that it was due to the supremacy of scientific Central Planning of production, which is driven by the satisfaction of peoples’ needs and NOT by profit. But someone could ask us: Isn’t it true that large capitalist corporations also have annual plans of production? Isn’t it true that imperialist alliances, such as the European Union, and bourgeois governments also implement specific long-term policies?
It is of course true that large monopoly corporations plan their individual production and take under consideration the needs of society, but with the fundamental criterion of increasing their profits and market shares. In an analogous way, imperialist alliances, such as the European Union, and the governments of its member-states, also have plans, plans that serve the strategic interests of monopoly capital and at the same time attempt to assimilate popular discontent and prevent it from turning in a progressive, radical direction. For example, the energy policies adopted by the EU, on the one hand, try to regulate the conflicts between the monopoly groups of the energy sector and the energy-intensive industries which demand “cheap energy” and, on the other hand, attempt to mask the problem of high energy prices for the masses by providing state subsidies, in order to maintain high prices and the profit margins of the energy corporations. Of course, these subsidies will ultimately be paid out of the taxation of the same popular masses.
The crucial point, however, in all these “plans” that are drawn up and that are being implemented by capitalist corporations, bourgeois governments and their imperialist alliances is that they are based on the maximization of profits and that they cannot do away with the fierce antagonisms between individual capitalists, sectors of the capitalist economy, the bourgois classes of individual counties. Capitalism cannot actually plan the economy on a national or international scale.
But what changes under socialism?
a) The first thing that changes in a radical way are the hands that hold the steering wheel of power and the keys to the economy: From the hands of the bourgeoisie, power passes into the hands of the working class. Capitalist ownership of the means of production is abolished by their socialization, that is we move to social ownership of the means of production. From the absolute power of capital, the dictatorship of capital, we pass to workrs’ power, the dictatorship of the proletariat. The socialist state certainly confronts and suppresses the enemies of socialism, but at the same time it plays a crucial creative role politically, economically and in the shperes of conciousness and culture.
b) A second crucial change under socialism is in the goal of production itself. The place of capitalist profit is taken over by the satisfaction of all the needs of society which are constantly expanding. The development of science, technology, of the productive forces creates new social needs, but also new possibilities to satisfy them. Here lies the superiority of Central Planning of the economy, the superiority of socialism.
Taking the example of the Energy sector that we used before, only socialism can ensure the utilization of all the energy resources of a country with a view to satisfying all social needs. That is to ensure, at the same time, the reduction of a country’s energy dependence on imports, its energy sufficiency, the protection of the health of the inhabitants and the environment, the adequate training and safety of the workers. Above all, the elimination of energy poverty and high prices, since energy will cease to be a commodity and will be considered a social right.
In the Soviet Union, for the first time in history, it was possible to scientifically plan and coordinate, in the scale of the entire country, all the goals of production with the aim of comprehensively satisfying the needs of society. For the first time in history, it was demonstrated in practice that social production can be planned and directed centrally, in a targeted and scientific manner, that the collective effort of millions of workers can be organized and coordinated on a massive, national scale for the well-being of society.
c) What played the decisive role so that this possibility became an actual reality in the Soviet Union? The radical change in the role of the workers themselves in production. The workers passed from the background to the foreground of History and acquired a continuous active role in adopting, implementing and controlling decisions. From early on, one of the fundamental aims of Soviet power was to increase the education level of the working masses and to free up labor time and rights so as to allow them to exercise their political duties through the Soviets and the oter institutions of working class power.
Based on what we said, where does scientific Central Planning under socialism differ from and why is the superior to bourgeois plans for the economy? It is superior, because we are talking about a higher form of organization of society in which all the fundamental pillars of the economy are radically altered: ownership over the means of production, the goal of production and the role of the workers, the actual producers of all social wealth.
That is, the Socialist Plan is not simply a “technocratically better” plan, but a superior social relation of production determined by the social ownership of the means of production. A relation that expresses the radically different way in which workers are united with the means of production. And what is this radically different way? The market no longer mediates the position of workers in production. In the Soviet Union no one could hire and thus exploit labor power. In the Soviet Union, at least during the frst decads of its existence, a consistent policy of gradually diminishing and eliminating the role of the market and its mechanisms, of commodity-money relations was followed.
Many honest workers are wondering: If this is the case, if socialist Central Planning and working class power are so superior, how and why was socialism overthrown at the end of the 20th century? These are crucial and vital questions that need to be faced square-on and answered by the working class movement today in order to revitalize the struggle for a socialist sociey free from exploitation.
We think that the answers cannot be found only in the last few years of the history of the Soviet Union, the years of “perestroika”, that the problems originated earlier on. We need to go back several decades, in the 1950’s, when, following the extensive destruction of human and material forces caused by the war and the rapid reconstruction of the Soviet economy and society, a range of new, objective problems appeared in socialist construction.
Instead of seeking a solution to these problems in a forward direction, in the direction of expanding and strengthening the communist relations of production, Soviet power sought solutions with an eye to the capitalist past. The turning point was the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 when, with the pretext of criticising the so-called “personality cult” of Stalin (who had died in 1953), a wide range of opportunist positions and politicies were adopted. The logic of “market socialism” gradually prevailed.
The bourgeois category of “enterprise profit”, the profit of each individual production unit, was adopted. The pay and the benefits of the directors of the enterprises, and even of their workers, were linked to the profit of the enterprise. The income differentials between workers and managers in the enterprise, but also between workers of different enterprises, increased. Individual and group interests gained the upper hand relative to the interests of the whole society.
In the agricultural sector, instead of planning the gradual transfer of all cooperative production to state control and state ownership, the opposite was done: Tractors and other machinery were transferred to the ownership of the kolkhozes, partial group ownership and interests were strengthened relative to the general societal interest. Even the state farms, the sovkhozes, passed into a full self-financing regime.
As a result of the opportunist turn of the 20th Congress, individual enrichment from enterprise profit, from the black market and from group ownership in the agricultural sector, led to an accumulation of cash reserves and the gradual appearance of a “shadow capital” that sought its legalization and the possibility of hiring labor power. Managers, group owners of the cooperatives/kolkhozes and corrupt party officials were pushing the opportunist degeneration of the CPSU with the support of the imperialist centers.
Meanwhile, the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, in 1961, had already proclaimed the Soviet Union a “state of the whole people” and the CPSU a “party of the whole people”, thus formally abandoning the dictatorship of the proletariat and weakening the role of the working class in socialist construction.
Opportunist degeneration eventually turned the leadership of the CPSU into an open counter-revolutionary force in the 1980s. During this entire period, thousands of members and cadres resisted this course, but without the necessary ideological and political coherence to reverse it.
Our conclusion is that the counter-revolution originated from social forces within the USSR. It was organized and implemented by the majority of the leadership of the CPSU, from above, as a result of the long-term opportunist erosion and mutation of the Party. Imperialism, from its side, steadily undermined the effort of socialist construction and assisted the growth of the opportunist current in the Party and the strengthening of the counter-revolutionary forces.
For the working class movement today, the course of socialist construction in the Soviet Union provides an extremely valuable historical experience. It shows, on the one hand, the tremendous acievements which can be attained when the revolutionary vanguard knows and makes good use of the laws of socialist construction and, on the other hand, the harmful consequences in the opposite case: when these laws are violated and the old, capitalist tools of the market are used in their place. Even after the elimination of the overt class enemy, the bourgeois class, socialist construction is not immune from the danger of backsliding and counterrevolution. It is for this reason that a firm, unwavering orientation of the Communist Party and of the working class power towards the full supremacy of direct social ownership in the economy is an absolute requirement.
Intervention of Evgeniy Kulikov, General Secretary of the SPR – Union of Trade Unions of Russia and member of the WFTU Presidential Council
First of all, fulfilling the request of my comrades from the RKRP (Russian Communist Workers’ Party), with whom we are associated with joint work on the development of the labor movement, I convey to the participants of our meeting my most sincere congratulations on the 79th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people and its allies over fascism during World War II. This is our common holiday, the holiday of all progressive forces!
There are many glorious pages in the history of the labor movement. But I am particularly proud of the struggle of Russian workers, workers and peasants in the 20th century under the leadership of the Leninist Bolshevik Party. The Socialist Revolution of 1917 liberated the productive forces of society, freed the peoples of Russia from national oppression, and unified national ownership of the means of production became the economic foundation of the USSR.
The construction of socialism had to begin in difficult conditions of struggle against internal counterrevolution and foreign intervention by imperialist states. Having defeated the enemy on the battlefield, the young Soviet government was faced with the task of launching production, which was destroyed during the First World War and the Civil War. How to do this, because such an experience did not exist? What role do trade unions have to play in this matter? In an exploitative state, trade unions organize and wage an economic struggle for more favorable conditions for the sale of labor, but what kind of struggle and with whom will they wage in a state of workers and peasants?
V.I. Lenin explained: “…Trade unions (now) are an organization of the ruling, ruling, governing class, the class that implements dictatorship, the class that implements state coercion. But this is not a state organization, it is not an organization of coercion, it is an educational organization, an organization of involvement, training, it is a school, a school of management, a school of management, a school of communism (PSS, t42, p. 203). Thus, trade unions become the most massive organization of workers, an integral part of the dictatorship of the working class and its allies. Trade unions participate in the organization of production, help to establish a system of distribution according to the needs of the working collective of a particular factory or factory, including the education of workers. That’s how it was in the USSR.
As long as capitalism exists, there is a struggle within the labor movement between communist and bourgeois ideologies, there is a struggle for supremacy between communist and bourgeois politics in trade unions. It never subsides, escalating as the strength and influence of the communist forces grow.
We know that the Great Patriotic War was a war of the growing new order, communism, with fascism, this product of capitalism at its highest stage of development. Hitler aimed to crush Bolshevism and, with the support of the imperialists of the United States and Europe, created his Anti-Comintern Pact. But, communism has won. The Red Army hoisted the Red Flag of Victory over the defeated Reichstag. A camp of socialist countries was created, and the beginning of the collapse of the colonial system was laid. The workers of the whole world looked up to the Soviet Union. It was the USSR that initiated the creation of October 3, 1945. The World Federation of Trade Unions, uniting and directing workers’ organizations to fight imperialism, against fascism, and for a world without exploitation.
Immediately after the end of World War II, the governments of the imperialist states unleashed a “cold war” against the countries of the socialist commonwealth, including organizing a split in the international trade union movement, establishing an ICSP controlled by bourgeois politics.
Under the conditions of the temporary defeat of socialism in the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe, the balance of class forces in the world shifted in favor of the bourgeoisie. The influence of the United States as a global imperialist center and the aggressiveness of its foreign policy have increased. But this inevitably causes defensive actions on the part of other states.
Today, in the war against Russia, in the actions of the Euro-Atlantic bloc to incite Ukrainian Nazis against Donbass and Russia, due to the increasing anti-Sovietism and Russophobia in Europe, notes of, if not revanchism, then some kind of revenge on Russia for the defeat of the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1945 are increasingly visible. We remember that in 2014, when the Russian authorities still considered President Poroshenko a handshake and tried to reconcile through the Minsk agreements, the miners and tractor drivers of Donbass were the first to stand in the way of the Nazis. It was they who bore the brunt of the war against the punishers on their shoulders.
Today, we clearly understand that we cannot lose. Russia must not be dismembered and repeat the fate of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya. And we understand that it is necessary to deal not only with the fascists in Ukraine, but also to restore order in our own house.
We know and clearly see the struggles of the Russian bourgeoisie, which for the imperialists of the West is its own, bourgeois. We are guided by the order of V.I. Lenin: “… we can (and must) combine the greatest passion in the great revolutionary struggle with the most cold-blooded and sober consideration of the frenzied tosses of the bourgeoisie.”
The SPR is an integral part of the WFTU, it is an integral part of the international labor movement. We are one family! The future belongs to us!
Intervention by Valentín Pacho, member of the Trade Union Education Committee of the IWI (Peru)
TRIBUTE TO THE VICTORS OF THE DEFEAT OF NAZI-FASCISM
Fraternal greetings comrades participants on the occasion of an emblematic date May 9, anniversary of the Great Anti-Fascist Victory, convened by the International Workers’ Institute (IWI).
First of all, I wish to express my full solidarity with the Palestinian people, who are fighting for their sovereignty, against the Zionist colonialist invasion, supported by US imperialism and its accomplices governments of the European Union. I condemn the crimes against humanity, against the population of the Gaza Strip; more than 38 thousand killed among thousands of women, children and the elderly; there is no war between Israel and Hamas, what there is is a GENOCIDE perpetrated by the criminal Zionist government of Netanyahu against the Palestinian population.
Commemorating the defeat of Nazi Fascism on May 9, reminds us of the invasion of the most powerful German Nazi Army into the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 under the name of Operation “Barbarossa”, this invasion generated expectations in US imperialism in the hope that the Soviet Union would be defeated.
But the united response of the Soviet people guided by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with its Red Army, the working class, men and women, that is to say the people in struggle, defeated the powerful German Nazi Army in each of the battles, until in the Battle of Stalingrad the invading German Nazi Army bit the dust of defeat and with it the end of Nazi fascism.
Immediately the heroic Red Army headed for Berlin to settle accounts with the Nazi criminal Hitler and his criminal entourage, but their cowardice led them to suicide; the resistance of the Nazi elite surrendered. The Red Army entered Berlin in triumph and raised the Red Flag with the Hammer and Sickle on the dome of the Reichstag, symbol of Nazi power: on May 9, 1945 the Great Anti-Fascist Victory was sealed. I pay tribute to the fallen in the Great Patriotic War to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Soviet people and the glorious Red Army.
Today, imperialism and reactionary forces are doing their best to distort history, they want to make the peoples believe that it was the American army and European allies who defeated the Nazis, which is completely false: it is a challenge that the peace-loving peoples have to take up in order to unmask the lies of the imperialists.
Long live Palestine – Long live proletarian internationalism – Long live the WFTU!
Intervention by Quim Boix, General Secretary of the TUI Pensioners and Retirees of the WFTU
Comrades.
From the Spanish state I would first like to congratulate the International Workers’ Institute, the WFTU, for the initiative of holding this session precisely when, as every year, we commemorate the victory against Fascism.
Victory that the bourgeoisie wants to forget and distort, making the US appear as the architect of the same, after the USSR put tens of millions of dead.
The USSR put much more than the dead, it put, since 1917, the flag of socialism and communism so high that nothing is comparable in the world after the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution. There is a before and an after that we revolutionaries do not always know how to use.
It was demonstrated that a society without human exploitation and with a correct distribution of wealth is possible.
It is true that in the 1990s there was an important step backwards, because that is how history works, there are advances and setbacks. But after the setbacks, the advances can be more stable, solid and definitive, if we learn from our mistakes.
The USSR first showed us that a society without capitalist exploitation was possible, it went from the theory of its possibility, theorized by Marx and Engels, to the demonstration that Lenin set in motion.
The Revolution was capable of transforming a backward country in many aspects into a leading country in almost every field, including the space race.
In spite of the millions of dead and the enormous expenses that had to be incurred to defeat Hitler’s troops and his allies, the USSR demonstrated that it was possible to provide food, housing, education, health, leisure, culture, pensions and transportation of the highest quality to hundreds of millions of citizens.
I myself lived, for a time, in the house of a pensioner in Leningrad, and I saw the good conditions in which all the people of the USSR (including peasants and housewives) spent the last years of their lives, from the age of 60, without going through the hardships that pensioners still suffer today in Capitalism.
I am referring to the millions of people who, under capitalist governments (from the USA to India, from Argentina to Japan, from South Africa to Norway), go through hardships when they acquire the condition of pensioners. We see them every day removing garbage to eat, deciding not to eat to buy medicines (which were free in the USSR), sleeping in the streets for not being able to afford housing, queuing for months and years to be treated in a hospital, moving on foot for not being able to pay for transportation, etc.
But the USSR also provided something very important, that only a socialist country could provide, and that was a great help to dozens of countries of the planet to win the ideological war against Capitalism.
There were tens of thousands of workers’ leaders, from the various class unions of the 5 continents, who passed through the trade union schools that the former Socialist countries, not only the USSR, put into operation. Complete courses of months, and quite a few years, which gave (with some exceptions) ideological solidity to the comrades, men and women, who came from all over the planet to pass through these courses.
And they were not only courses for trade unionists, but also for leaders of political organizations. All free of charge, sometimes they even paid for the trips, as a sign of internationalist solidarity. They also paid for learning the language of the country where the classes were given, when the courses were university courses.
It is true that this enormous expense also gave benefits to the USSR and other countries that were trying to build Socialism, and through it the communist society. It gave them the benefit of internationalist solidarity, which almost 100% of those who passed through the aforementioned schools, were able to practice when they returned to their countries of origin, and in them to organize the class union struggle or the political struggle for socialism.
In the Spanish state, I am a direct witness of it (I organized part of these trips, without participating in any directly), many were the leaders of CCOO, which then was a class union, not the union sold to the bosses that it is today, who went through the aforementioned free courses.
But this positive practice of the countries building Socialism stopped when the betrayal called Perestroika began.
Now we only have the great work of Ideological Struggle done by the IWI (International Workers’ Institute), which I again congratulate.
I also want to congratulate the IWI for having published the book of comrade George Mavrikos: “CRITICAL NOTES on the History of the World Trade-Union Movement, Issues of Tactics and Strategy”. The US comrade who has preceded me has already spoken positively of its English edition, I do it of the Spanish edition.
We are going to invite George Mavrikos to come to Spain so that we can make acts of presentation of this important historical document.
I conclude by expressing my personal gratitude to all the Soviet people and the other peoples who fought to create socialist societies, for this great internationalist work in the ideological struggle.
Let us learn from history, in order to continue fighting successfully for the destruction of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialist societies.
See photos below:
