The 1956 Khrushchev Revelations

The Soviet Union and our criterion

Comrades, as the chairman has indicated, and as many of you know, a speech about the Soviet Union is not a new experience for me. In fact, I have been talking about it ever since 1917, and always from the same point of view. And I wish to begin my remarks tonight by restating the opinions that I have held about the Soviet Union ever since it first came into existence, 39 years ago next November, and by presenting my credentials, so to speak, to talk once again about the great new things that have been happening there, to an audience which I take it is friendly, as I am, to the Soviet Union, and who believe, as I do, that the interest and the destiny of the international working class is indissolubly bound up with the interest and the destiny of the Soviet Union.

We Trotskyists regard the Russian Revolution of 1917 as the great dividing line in history. Ascending world capitalism came to a halt there on November 7, 1917, and met its first defeat and entered into its irrevocable decline. The Russian Revolution signalized the real beginning of humanity's march to the higher and better order of socialism. All social progress in modern times dates from November 7, 1917. We have always regarded the Russian Revolution not as an end in itself, but as the starting point of the international revolution. And for that reason, from that socialist, internationalist standpoint, we have been partisans and defenders of the Soviet Union and the Russian Revolution which brought it into existence ever since 1917. Everything that has happened in the 39-year evolution of the Soviet Union has always had a burning interest for us from that international socialist point of view.

And everything that we have said and done, either in praise or in criticism, in all the intervening time has been governed by the single criterion, what is good for the revolution, for the defense of the Soviet Union, and for the extension of the revolution throughout the world. That was our criterion in defending the revolution in its first difficult years, when the combined imperialist powers tried to strangle the young revolution in the cradle. That was our criterion in the 20s when we first came out in support of the Left Opposition in the Russian party in the internal struggle against the bureaucratic degeneration of the revolution under Stalin. The Left Opposition, which began its fight in Russia in the 20s, fought under the great slogans of Soviet democracy, industrialization, and revolutionary internationalism, and for the defense of the Soviet Union by the policy of international class trouble [?]. We were governed by the same criterion, what is good for the Soviet Union and for its extension throughout the world, in the 30s, when we denounced the Moscow trials as frame-ups and protested against the physical extermination of the old Bolsheviks who were the victims of those trials.

What the 20th Congress means

And we bring the same criterion, the same basic point of view about the Soviet Union, to the present consideration of the new revelations now coming out of Moscow about the monstrous crimes of Stalin and Stalinism, and we discuss them as partisans and defenders of the Soviet Union. I state that by way of introduction to establish the theme of all that I will have to say tonight.

The news coming from the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union represents progress in all respects. In the first place, the economic reports show the tremendous development of the productive forces of the Soviet Union, including its military potential. Thanks to the revolution and the new social system of nationalized property and planned production created and made possible by the revolution, the Soviet Union is no longer a backward country. It stands second only to the United States, and its rate of development is greater than that of the United States.

In the second place, the 20th Congress occurred at a moment when the extension of the revolution and the abolition of capitalist property forms in Eastern Europe and in China, and the rising tide of the colonial revolution, and the innumerable weaknesses and dislocations in the world capitalist front, have greatly improved the position of the Soviet Union in relation to the imperialist powers. Thanks to this extension of the revolution, the Soviet Union is no longer isolated and surrounded in a capitalist world. In international relations today, the Soviet Union obviously leads not from weakness, but from strength. It is the strength of the Soviet Union that compelled the imperialist powers headed by the United States to pause before the reckless gamble of a military attack which had been the central feature of their world program for a long time.

And finally, the events of the 20th Congress represent progress because a part of the truth of what has been going on inside the Soviet Union for a long time to undermine it and endanger it, a part of the truth about that was revealed at the 20th Congress for the first time, and truth is always the ally of progress. In the new revelations and others that are yet to come, we see the distorted reflections in the top circles of the Soviet bureaucracy of a new stage in the development of the Russian Revolution, a progressive stage. The Soviet masses are beginning to stir, and that's why the tops are shaking. The wholesale denunciation and repudiation of Stalin three years after he is safely dead, sensational and far-reaching as it is, marks only the beginning. The whole story of the monstrous crimes of Stalin and Stalinism has not yet been told. Far from it. But the heirs and accomplices of Stalin, by their preliminary revelations, have set in motion a process that they will never be able to control. It will not stop until the full truth is known, and until every vestige of Stalinism in the Soviet Union has been swept away by the Soviet masses, and until this foul disease is eradicated from the international labor movement. The truth is on the march again, and nothing can stop it. The truth is always progressive. The truth is revolutionary.

Khrushchev's speech and the Daily Worker

The subject of our discussion tonight is provided by the speech of Khrushchev in the closing session of the 20th Congress, February 24 and 25. The text of this speech was leaked to the diplomatic representatives of the various foreign powers and was freely referred to in the press more than two months ago. On June 4, the text of the speech, of 26,000 words, was issued to the press by the United States State Department. It was published in full in the New York Times the next day, June 5, and brought no denial or repudiation from the Kremlin. The current issue of the Militant, which you have in your hands, I think, which went to press a week ago, carried the full text of the speech in four pages. Finally, the New York Daily Worker, in its last weekend edition, also printed the entire text, as released by the U.S. State Department, without in any way challenging its authenticity. So when we discuss the speech as it has been printed in these various publications I have named, we can take it we are discussing the speech, at least part of the speech, as it was actually delivered at the 20th Congress.

The Daily Worker says in its weekend edition that it is publishing the speech as a contribution to the effort, here I quote, "to explore ways and means of uniting socialist-minded Americans and of advancing socialist ideas." Unquote. And then it adds, "We hope, too, that communists, readers of our paper, and other socialist-minded Americans will contribute their thinking to the problems confronting the Marxist movement in the discussion of this subject." Unquote. I agree with that sentiment expressed in the Daily Worker. And I also take it that the invitation to other socialist-minded workers to take part in the discussion also includes me. And I hope I'm not mistaken about that. My remarks tonight can be taken as a response to the invitation of the Daily Worker. Although, to be perfectly frank with you, I will freely admit that the preparations for this meeting had already been made, and I would probably be making my speech anyway, even if the invitation had not been so kindly extended.

The Daily Worker sets a good theme for the discussion when it says in its editorial, and here I quote again, "The State Department is dead wrong when it suggests that the evils of the Stalin era are inherent in socialism. The fact is that the development of these evils created a peril for socialism. The repression, the injustice, the frame-up, the torture, are a gross perversion of socialist principles." Unquote. That's what the weekend Worker said. I fully agree with that statement. That has always been our opinion, and we see less reason than ever to change it now.

Khrushchev's testimony

What is new and important in the Khrushchev report is that the crimes of Stalin against the Soviet Union, against the international working class, against socialism, are now admitted and confirmed by Stalin's most intimate collaborators, his hand-picked disciples, who were accomplices in those very crimes. Khrushchev's report is the testimony of an expert. He is the man who knew. He was there. And here are the main points of his testimony, summarized.

One, Khrushchev's report says that the Stalin regime was guilty of the mass murder of a whole generation of revolutionists who participated in the October 1917 revolution as comrades and co-workers of Lenin. Two, the Stalin regime systematically perpetrated frame-ups, torture, the extraction of false confessions and summary execution against countless thousands of innocent victims. Three, the Moscow trials of the 30s, beginning with the trials following the assassination of Kirov in 1934, were staged by Stalin's police machine and were judicial frauds from beginning to end. Four, the charges that the Trotskyists were spies, wreckers, and terrorists were sheer fabrication. Five, the Stalin regime promoted a Stalin cult, devoting enormous efforts to build the myth of his genius and his infallibility. It established a system of compulsory flattery, adulation, and fantastic glorification. And six, according to Khrushchev's report, the Stalin regime systematically falsified history to suit the needs of the omnipotent dictator in his struggle against his political enemies and to further his own deification. So says Khrushchev in his report. You have the whole text of the speech in the Militant, and you can verify for yourself the summary of its contents that I have just made.

The long history of Stalinism and the struggle against it encompasses all the problems of the international labor movement for the past 30 years. Many books, classics of Marxism, have been written in the course of this struggle. It is the most important question in the world. Many lectures would be required to cover this vast field, and I will not attempt to cover it all tonight by any means. Here tonight, I wish to single out and quote Khrushchev's testimony about Stalin's method of dealing with honest revolutionary critics and opponents, because I consider that is the question which goes to the heart of all the other questions: how Stalin wiped out the whole generation of the companions of Lenin. Comrades, it is the most terrible story in all history. For the companions of Lenin, whom Stalin murdered, were the advance guard of humanity. They were the noblest and best that history has yet seen. And we should weep indeed for the slaughtered saints of the Great Revolution.

Three months ago, when the first report of the 20th Congress came out, William Z. Foster, the national chairman of the Communist Party, decided to sweep the whole business under the rug. He wrote a reassuring article for the Daily Worker. This old hack of Stalin, who has been applauding all his crimes for 30 years, came to Stalin's defense once again, three months ago. We haven't heard from him lately. But three months ago, he told the young Communist Party members in the Daily Worker, the young communists who were alarmed about the report, take it easy, wait till we get the official word from last time [?]. Stalin did a lot of good, he said. Don't tear him to political shreds. Then he admitted there might have been a few small mistakes, but nothing to get excited about. He asked, in this article I have mentioned, he asked with an innocent air, as if he didn't know, were some injustices committed in the purges? Well, here's what Khrushchev answers in the official report that he asked for.

I'm now going to quote chapter and verse from Khrushchev's answer to Foster's question, were some injustices committed in the purges. Remember, as I quote, that this is not Trotsky speaking. It is Khrushchev repeating what Trotsky said 20 years ago, before he was assassinated by an agent of Stalin. I'm reading now direct quotations from Khrushchev's report. He says: "Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his own viewpoint and the correctness of his position was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation." That's the cruciation [?]. Again: "Stalin originated the concept 'enemy of the people.' This term automatically rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proved. This term made possible the usage of the most cruel repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin. This concept, 'enemy of the people,' actually eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight or the making of one's views known on this or that issue, even those of a practical character. In the main and in actuality, the only proof of guilt used against all norms of current legal science was the confession of the accused himself. And as subsequent probing proved, confessions were acquired through physical pressures against the accused. The formula 'enemy of the people' was specifically introduced for the purpose of annihilating such individuals. It is a fact that many persons who were later annihilated as enemies of the party and people had worked with Lenin during his life." All those are the words of Khrushchev.

Khrushchev speaks of the purges, the frame-up trials, and the false confessions again as follows. Here I quote directly: "Government and economic activists who were branded in 1937-1938 as enemies were actually never enemies, spies, wreckers, and so forth, but were always honest communists. They were only so stigmatized, and often, no longer able to bear barbaric tortures, they charged themselves, at the order of investigative judges, falsifiers, with all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes. The Commission has presented to the Central Committee lengthy and documented materials pertaining to mass repressions against the delegates to the 17th Party Congress of 1934 and against members of the Central Committee elected at that 1934 conference. These materials have been studied by the presidium of the Central Committee. It was determined that of the 139 members and candidates of the party's Central Committee who were elected at the 17th Congress, 98 persons, that is 70 percent, were arrested and shot, mostly in 1937 and 1938." That's not all. Khrushchev continues: "The same fate met not only the Central Committee members, but also the majority of the delegates to the 17th Congress. Of 1,966 delegates with either voting or advisory rights, 1,108 persons were arrested on charges of anti-revolutionary crime." That is decidedly more than a majority of the delegates to the 1934 Congress.

How were the false confessions obtained? Khrushchev says again, and here again I quote directly from his speech: "Now when the cases of some of these so-called spies and saboteurs were examined, it was found that all their cases were fabricated. Confessions of guilt of many arrested and charged with enemy activity were gained with the help of cruel and inhuman torture."

Khrushchev doesn't rest with general statements. He gives specific examples. I'll read a couple of them. He says: "An example of vile provocation, of odious falsification, and of criminal violation of revolutionary legality is the case of the former candidate for the Central Political Bureau, one of the most eminent workers of the party and of the Soviet government, Comrade Robert I. Eikhe, who was a member of the party since 1905. Eikhe was forced under torture to sign ahead of time a protocol of his confession prepared by the investigative judges, in which he and several other eminent party workers were accused of anti-Soviet activity. On October 1, 1939, Eikhe sent his declaration to Stalin in which he categorically denied his guilt and asked for an examination of his case." This declaration of Eikhe said, quote: "The case is as follows. Not being able to suffer the tortures to which I was submitted by Ushakov [?] and Nikolaev, and especially by the first one, who utilized the knowledge that my broken ribs had not properly mended and have caused me great pain, I had been forced to accuse myself and others." And Khrushchev commented: "On February 4th, Eikhe was shot. It has been definitely established now that Eikhe's case was fabricated. He has been posthumously rehabilitated."

Khrushchev gives another example. Quote: "Comrade Rudzutak, candidate member of the political bureau, member of the party since 1905, who spent 10 years in a Tsarist [?] hard labor camp, completely retracted in court the confession that was forced from him." And what happened? "Sentence was pronounced on him in 20 minutes and he was shot. After careful examination of the case in 1955, it was established that the accusation against Rudzutak was false and that it was based on slanderous material. Rudzutak has been rehabilitated posthumously."

Khrushchev goes on and on. He asks: "When Stalin said that one or another should be arrested, it was necessary to accept on faith that he was an enemy of the people. And what proofs were offered? The confessions of the arrested. And the investigative judges accepted these confessions. And how is it possible that a person confesses to crimes which he has not committed?" We heard that over and over again when we were fighting against the Moscow trials in '36 and '37. We heard every day in the Daily Worker, they confessed, didn't they? That proves they're guilty. Well, here's what their confessions were worth, according to Khrushchev. "How is it possible that a person confesses to crimes which he has not committed? Only in one way, because of the application of physical methods of pressuring him, torture, bringing him to a state of unconsciousness, deprivation of his judgment, taking away his human dignity. In this manner were confessions [inaudible]."

Who fought Stalinism from the beginning

What I have just quoted at some length is only a small part of Khrushchev's testimony, which you can read for yourself. And his whole testimony tells only a small part of the truth. These terrifying revelations which have come out of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union raise questions which every honest communist is asking. They're asking it today at every meeting of the Communist Party where they have a chance. First, how was such a monstrous regime of frame-up and murder possible in the Soviet Union, which was created by a workers' revolution, which was led by the most honest, the most truly democratic party in all history? Second, who, if anybody, opposed this degeneration and spoke out against it, and what happened to them? And third, the $64,000 question which every honest communist is asking, all those who've been duped and deceived by the official Communist Party press are asking: why weren't we told this before?

Khrushchev's answer to the last question, why weren't we told before, is not so much an answer as an excuse. It was dangerous to speak, he said. They were afraid of their lives. But since when do revolutionists tell the truth only when it is safe? What has become of the principle that a revolutionist must tell the truth to the people under all circumstances, as the Bolsheviks did under the Tsar? It is always dangerous to oppose a tyranny and tell the truth about it. It was dangerous for the Bolsheviks in Tsar's time, but that didn't stop them. They told the truth just the same, at the cost of imprisonment and death for many of them, and they organized an underground movement that eventually led to the greatest revolution in all history.

There were people in the Soviet Union who recognized the danger of Stalin and Stalinism from the very beginning. They told the truth about it, too, and they led the fight against it from the beginning in 1923, 33 years ago. The organizers of the fight against Stalinism were the very same people who organized and led the October Revolution in 1917. The first one to denounce Stalin in writing and to demand his removal was Lenin, and the second was Trotsky. The same two men who led the Great Revolution led the fight against its bureaucratic degeneration under Stalin.

On his sickbed, December 25, 1922, Lenin wrote his Testament to the party. This Testament of Lenin, which has never yet been printed in the American Communist press and was suppressed in the Soviet Union under Stalin, is now being disclosed bit by bit. We have published it in the Militant and in a pamphlet years ago, which you can get at the literature stall, if you wish. In this testament of Lenin, he said, here I quote: "Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has concentrated an enormous power in his hands, and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution." That was the first warning of Lenin. And while he lay helpless, struggling with death and his last illness, Stalin was moving to consolidate his power. And Lenin became alarmed, and on January 4, 1923, a couple of weeks later, he added a postscript to his testament. And here is what he wrote in this postscript. I quote from the Testament. Postscript: "Stalin is too rude, and this fault, entirely supportable in relations among us communists, becomes insupportable in the office of general secretary. Therefore I propose to the comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position and appoint to it another man who in all respects differs from Stalin only in superiority, namely, more patient, more loyal, more polite, and more attentive to comrades, less capricious, and so forth." So wrote Lenin in his Testament to the party.

Lenin, struggling with death, appealed to Trotsky at that time and offered to make a bloc with him to fight the growing bureaucratism in the party and in the state machine. Trotsky agreed, and in the last months of Lenin's life, they made a bloc to fight the bureaucratic degeneration. Lenin died in January 1924, without ever being able to return to his duties throughout the preceding year. Trotsky carried on the fight. That's the true explanation of how the struggle against Stalinism was started in the Soviet Union. And it's all coming out now. It is all documented from the very beginning up to the latest events and cannot be suppressed any longer.

It is not true, comrades, as Khrushchev pretends, that nobody dared to speak out against Stalin. The old Bolsheviks spoke out. It was dangerous, but they conducted the struggle just the same, as was their revolutionary duty, and they paid for it with their lives. Trotsky was assassinated in 1940 because he had told the truth about Stalin, and for no other reason. And tens of thousands of the old Bolsheviks were slaughtered in the Soviet Union because they spoke out against Stalin, and for no other reason. The revolutionary struggle against Stalinism has been the greatest political and ideological struggle in all the history of the working class by far, and it has left the richest documentary record. The truth is in that literary record, in books and pamphlets and innumerable articles and mimeographed bulletins. It is a great treasury of Marxist thought, and all who want to know the truth should study it conscientiously.

If Khrushchev and company were opposed to the Stalinist regime while Stalin was alive and could not speak out openly against it because of the terror, why didn't they organize an underground movement and leave a printed record of their opposition which could be referred to now? They never made such a record, and they had nothing to refer to, because they were not revolutionists. They were not opponents of the regime which they now condemn.

[Tape break]

Not Stalin alone: the privileged bureaucracy

The truth is that they were the hand-picked accomplices of Stalin, and they owe their careers and their privileges to him and his regime. They want to blame everything now on Stalin as an individual. There is nothing Marxist in such an explanation of any social regime. The fact is that the Stalin regime, like every other, had a social basis. Stalin was the representative of the Soviet bureaucracy. Many people, including Khrushchev and company, enjoyed rich benefits and privileges under the rule of Stalin. Not everybody was hungry. Not everybody was chained to his job and refused permission to change it. Not everybody was sent to slave labor camps, although there were millions and millions of them. Some of them grew fat under Stalin. Some of them drove automobiles and lived in summer cottages and enjoyed all the fruits of the labor of the heroic Russian working class. They were the ones who supported Stalin. And they were well satisfied with his regime. And they supported it in all its crimes. The privileged beneficiaries of the Stalin regime numbered millions in the Soviet Union. There was not one man alone. There were millions of privileged people tied to that regime and prospering under it.

Khrushchev's explanation explains nothing of what really happened. Their method today is the same as their method yesterday turned upside down. Yesterday Stalin was pictured as a superman, as the infallible benevolent leader who could make no mistake and do no wrong, who was responsible for all progress and all victories in the Soviet Union in peace and in war. Today the same Stalin is represented as a paranoid criminal who was personally responsible for all the mistakes which brought the Soviet Union to the brink of ruin, all by himself. The great man theory is simply replaced by the devil theory, the other side of the same coin. The devil is dead, but the privileged bureaucrats still live. They remain in power in the Soviet Union, and don't you forget that. And their sole concern is to stay in power and hang on to their privileges at the expense of the working masses in the Soviet Union, who are our concern.

Why do these bureaucrats speak out now, three years after the death of Stalin, and begin to tell a part about that terrible regime, a part of the truth? Is it because they have suddenly turned honest and are no longer afraid? Some people are asking you to believe that. But they are liars and deceivers. There have been some concessions and some reforms, no question about that. But there has been no basic change in the bureaucratic regime of special privileges for a minority and hard times for the majority established under Stalin. That bureaucracy still has the privileges and the workers have no rights and no freedom whatever, and anybody who says they do lies. There is no such thing as a free worker in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev any more than there was under Stalin. That has yet to come. The workers have got to get that freedom for themselves.

I think many of you who are present in this hall know the great reputation of I. F. Stone, the distinguished journalist who used to write for the New York Compass and the New York Post, an iconoclast who never buckled to the witch hunt, who came out in defense of the civil rights of the communists, of James Kutcher, the Trotskyists, and everybody else persecuted under it, who participates in all activities of the united front character in defense of civil rights and civil liberties with Stalinists or Trotskyists or socialists or whoever may be involved. He has a great reputation for integrity as a journalist, and justly earned. I. F. Stone went over to Russia after the 20th Congress to take a look for himself. And because he had always been considered, and justly so, as friendly to the Soviet Union, many people were expecting and hoping that he would send back a favorable and perhaps a whitewash report that everything is lovely now. He had been a critic of the Moscow trials and the suppression of civil liberties and the slave labor camps. He never went for that before. They thought he would say everything is better now. He came back and he wrote a terrible series of articles of disillusionment in his paper called I. F. Stone's Weekly. In my opinion, he went too far in his economic characterization, but he hit the nail on the head when he described the political situation. He summed it up in one sentence. For the benefit of people who want to deceive themselves that everything has been cured in the Soviet Union, I will simply say this: this is not a good regime and it is not run by honest men.

Now, is Khrushchev and company? No. Khrushchev and company are the same bureaucrats, the same cynical careerists they were when they served Stalin, and climbed into high office over a mound of corpses of better men than they are. They have not turned honest [?]. They are still afraid. But they are afraid now, not of the dead Stalin, but of the living wrath of the Soviet masses who have been so long oppressed and who have begun to rise against their oppression.

The pressure from below: "Back to Lenin"

The irresistible pressure of the Soviet workers was the power behind the 20th Congress, and that Congress is the key to the understanding of what is taking place. The bureaucrats assembled at that Congress had had warning signals of a coming storm and they began to respond to these signals. Remember the uprising of the German workers in June 1953 [?], that was followed a month later by a general strike in the forced labor camps of Vorkuta. These tremendous actions under the guns of police state terror, when workers took their lives in their hands to strike, gave notice of the first revolution, of the political revolution that is brewing against Stalin, as the general strikes in the spring of 1905 gave notice of the first revolution against the Tsar. Khrushchev and company want to exculpate themselves. They want to throw off the blame and escape the consequences of the people's hatred and the people's wrath. I do not say this to minimize the importance of what has been said and done at the 20th Congress, or to pass it off as if nothing had happened.

No, great things indeed are happening in the Soviet Union these days, and their importance becomes magnified if we see them in their true light, as a reflection, a distorted reflection, in the top circles of the privileged bureaucracy of a profound movement from below, a movement of the oppressed Soviet workers, a revolutionary movement for the overthrow of the privileged bureaucracy and the restoration of Soviet democracy. That's what the Soviet workers mean when they shout ever louder and louder, back to Lenin. The slogan back to Lenin was the slogan of the Left Opposition in the 20s and the 30s. That's the slogan of the Vorkuta strike in 1953. And that's the slogan of the Soviet workers today. No wonder the bureaucrats assembled at the Congress also gave three cheers for the slogan back to Lenin. Back to Lenin and nothing less is what the Soviet workers really demand, and they demand the substance and not merely the form.

We put all our faith in this revolutionary movement of the Soviet workers and no faith whatever in the good intentions of the bureaucratic heirs of Stalin. I think the best way to muddle up the discussion of the new events, and the worst crime against the truth in the discussion opening up now, is to say that the Soviet bureaucrats have already reformed themselves or are in the process of doing so, that they have mellowed and that all they need is to be let alone to bring about a gradual elimination of all the hated features of Stalinism and the reinstitution of a democratic workers' regime. If they are trusted and left alone, everything will remain basically the same. These bureaucrats are the privileged upper crust. They will never give up their privileges voluntarily. They have to be overthrown like every other privileged group in history has to be overthrown. Trotsky said on this subject 20 years ago, in his great book, The Revolution Betrayed, no tiger ever yet cut off its own claw. They have to be trimmed by others.

We can be confident that the Russian masses will not let the bureaucrats alone to reform themselves. We can be confident that the changes now taking place in the Soviet Union represent not the end but the beginning of a revolutionary transformation that will sweep out the last remnants of Stalinism. The political revolution against the privileged bureaucrats has nothing in common with the dreams and hopes of imperialists of a capitalist counter-revolution. That's not what's on the order of the day in the Soviet Union. Political revolution against the privileged bureaucrats will not bring the return of capitalism. On the contrary, just the contrary, in the final analysis it is the only sure way to prevent the return of capitalism in the Soviet Union, to let the workers assume once again the real political power. That's the way Trotsky explained it 20 years ago in the book I have mentioned. His theoretical exposition has burning actuality for all of us who want to follow this question and its further development in these days.

The American Communist Party leaders

Now, if we reject Khrushchev's claim that he and his associates did not tell the truth before because they were afraid for their lives, what shall we say about the leaders of the American Communist Party who hid the truth about the Stalin regime from their own members and from the readers of their press, all these many years? What were they afraid of? Why, the most they stood to lose was their position and their false importance as little Stalins. To be sure, if they had told the truth, they would have been slandered. They would have been expelled. They would have been denounced as fascist spies and counter-revolutionists. But it's possible to survive all that if you have some integrity and some courage. We proved that for [inaudible]. The skins of the American Stalinist leaders, whatever they may be worth, weren't in very great danger. The only thing they were afraid of was the truth, because the truth would have demolished all their claims to leadership.

What I. F. Stone said about the Khrushchev regime can be said of the so-called Communist Party leadership in this country. This is not an honest party, and it is not run by honest men. That's a growing conviction in the rank and file of the Communist Party, growing so strong you even see it written in the Daily Worker letters column. They get so many letters stating that they have to print some of them. I would make it very clear and explicit that I'm talking now about the official leaders of the Communist Party and not about the honest communist workers whom they duped and deceived and betrayed.

The American Stalinist leaders are apparently proceeding on the theory that confession is not only good for the soul, but also that it wipes out all responsibility for the crimes admitted. You merely have to say you were wrong and then everything is cleared up. They say, we were wrong. We defended all the crimes and all the lies of Stalin and Stalinism. We cheered for all the frame-ups and all the murders of honest revolutionists. We denounced all who protested against the frame-ups and murders as counter-revolutionists and fascist spies. Our careers were built on lies. We're sorry. Now let's all get together and trust each other. That's the sum and substance of the propaganda of the leaders of the Communist Party since the 20th Congress in Moscow. But at more than one meeting of the Communist Party in recent days, CP members and sympathizers who have been duped and deceived so long have asked the question, how can we now trust anything you say? My opinion is you can, but you shouldn't. It's not wise.

When those careerist leaders of the Communist Party try to make a virtue of their claim that they're now correcting their mistakes merely by admitting some of them, they ought to be asked a simple question which was asked of a Stalinist speaker at a trade union conference in England, which I read in Bevan's Weekly [?]. The trade unionist asked the Stalinist speaker, who had explained that they had made mistakes but they're now correcting their mistakes, he asked him, how do you correct such a mistake as the frame-up and murder of [?] him? The account I read didn't give the answer of the Stalinist speaker. I don't know what he said, but I imagine it would be very hard to answer. You can be sure that in any discussion we take part in, looking toward the regroupment and reconstruction of an honest movement of revolutionary socialists in this country, we will be on hand to ask such questions as that. And many more questions equally inconvenient for people who want to wipe a sponge over all the crimes of the past and pretend that the slate is now clean and there's no more blood on it.

Back to Lenin, or forward to the Democratic Party?

The new program they are offering, I have been reading it in the Daily Worker, and to a certain extent in the People's World, the new program they are offering, as far as I can make out, is nothing but Stalinism without Stalin, and Browderism without Browder. That's no good. One of the questions we want to ask at the start of the discussion among socialist-minded workers whom they've invited to take part in the discussion is something about a contradiction of their slogan. The 20th Congress says, back to Lenin, and the Communist Party of the United States is shouting, forward to the Democratic Party. Now you can't say both, or rather you can say both, but you can't do both at the same time. It's going in opposite directions. We for our part can't join the Democratic Party if, in order to have unity with these people, we have to join the Democratic Party. We're barred, because we are revolutionary socialists, not bourgeois democrats.

This Democratic Party is a capitalist party. Well, I knew that when I was 16 years old. I heard that explained by Eugene V. Debs 50 years ago. The Democratic Party is a capitalist party just like the Republican Party. The only difference between them is the difference between the Gold Dust twins. In any case, your choice, they're both the same fundamentally. The Democratic Party is a capitalist party representing the interests of the bankers, the monopolists, and the Dixiecrats. Isn't that true? Well, let the bankers and the monopolists and the Dixiecrats have it. That's what we say. And let the workers organize a class party of their own. That was Lenin's idea. Anyone who wants to go back to Lenin can't escape the fact that Lenin insisted first of all and above all on a class party of the workers. He didn't ask them to join Miliukov's party in the Soviet Union, which is just as good as the Democratic Party of Stevenson in the United States. He said, organize the Workers' Party to overthrow this Miliukov gang. And even before Lenin, Karl Marx, over a hundred years ago, said the workers should have a class party of their own.

We're heartily in favor of a full and free discussion among all people and all tendencies friendly to the Soviet Union and professing devotion to the socialist ideas. We hope and believe that out of such a discussion, a full and free and unregulated discussion, can come a new understanding among honest socialist-minded people and a new solidarity so long disrupted by Stalinism, and a regroupment in an honest party of American socialists. We, for our part, are ready and willing to contribute our part to bring about this new understanding and this new solidarity in a common struggle for a common cause. We don't demand that anybody take our word for it. We don't demand that anybody accept what we say out of hand. We are ready to listen as well as to speak, to learn as well as to teach. But after all the years of wholesale lying, misrepresentation and terror brought into the movement by Stalinism, let us now have for the first time in 30 years a really free and honest discussion. Let us have old-fashioned forums and open debates where all points of view are fairly heard. Let us put all questions on the table and hear all opinions in a friendly way. Let the articles, pamphlets, and books of all sides be studied conscientiously. Let us agree to search together for the truth that will make us free, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And let us search for this truth with free and independent minds, as befits revolutionists, each one thinking for himself and nobody taking anybody's word for it.

That was the advice of Lenin long ago. That's the way he trained his Bolsheviks, to think independently, to know all sides of a subject, and make up their minds on the basis of independent inquiry. That was the advice of Lenin put in specific words, which we printed in the first issue of the Militant when we began our struggle against Stalinism, 28 years ago, in November 1928. Lenin's advice still holds good today, and it reads today as follows, as we printed it on the masthead of the first number of our Militant. I quote: "It is necessary that every member of the party should study calmly and with the greatest objectivity first the substance of the differences of opinion and then the development of the struggles within the party. Neither the one nor the other can be done unless the documents of both sides are public. He who takes somebody's word for it is a hopeless idiot who can be disposed of with a simple gesture of the hand." Those are the words of Lenin. Take nobody's word for it. Think for yourself. Study all points of view calmly and with the greatest objectivity. So said Lenin. Let that be the motto for the new discussion in the ranks of radical workers in this country. By that method, let us strive for a new understanding and a new solidarity and a new regroupment of all honest workers in a common struggle for a socialist America.

Questions and discussion

Well, Comrade Chairman [?], I first want to express my appreciation of the large number of questions that were asked. I would have liked it even better if there had been some discussion from the floor. Some of the questions implied discussion, but I would have been glad if there had been more of it. I was raised in the early days of the socialist radical movement in this country, when open forums were held regularly all the time, and it was a very common thing for the speaker at the forum to expect three or four different points of view to be represented in the discussion from the floor, and a thorough airing of different conceptions of how to build a workers' movement and so on.

In recent years, free discussion has pretty much been stultified in this country. The main responsibility for that, of course, has been Stalinism. Stalinism invented the idea that if you call people fascists or enemies of the people or disagree with them in any way, they have no right to be heard anymore. So discussion became one-sided. They did not discuss with enemies of the people. Then they carried that over inside the Communist Party and didn't have any discussion there. What you had a right to do in the Communist Party is to come and listen to the big shots talk, but you didn't have a right to talk back. But that wasn't the way it was in the early CP, and I belonged to it in the early days. It was a very democratic organization. There was plenty of free discussion, free differences of opinion among the leadership. The leaders had to account for themselves to the ranks, had to get a majority of votes if they wanted to stay in office, and had no means whatever of suppressing this discussion.

I tell you, young people, and people not so young, who have had no experience in political life except being a member of the Communist Party, they don't know what the atmosphere of free democratic discussion is. They have to get accustomed to it gradually. I think some who've come to this meeting might have had some questions to raise or maybe some arguments to make, but felt it was out of order because they were only in the audience and not on the floor. We've got to make up our minds that if we're ever going to clear up the movement in this country and get a new start with all honest forces cooperating, we've got to begin with free discussion. I mean really free discussion. Honestly considering all points of view, listening to each other talk, and trying to learn from each other. I hope tonight's meeting will be a down payment, a little installment and a contribution to the creation of this new atmosphere among the various tendencies in the radical labor movement. I don't expect everybody to agree with everything I say. As long as I have the privilege of talking, that's all I have a right to demand, and you have the same right for yourself.

Now, I noticed one comrade back there spoke, and I spotted him right away as a man who is not infected with religious superstition. He wants to know whether the slogan "religion is the opium of the people" is being converted into the slogan "religion is the oxygen of the people." Is that the question? Well, I know your point of view, and I am at somewhat of a disadvantage because for the first time in many years I am speaking in a church. And I don't exactly know what the etiquette is. I don't want to be out of order, and at the same time, I don't want to conceal my opinion that I have grave doubts of the efficacy of all other churches except possibly the Unitarian. That's just put in for Satan's sake.

The fact of the matter is, religion has been opposed by the revolutionary party in Russia in the early days, ideologically. Marx taught that religion is the opium of the people. That's the teaching of all followers of Marx, that religious superstition is incompatible with scientific thought. That doesn't mean that religion should be persecuted and ridiculed and so forth. At times in Russia they went to the extreme of hooligan attacks against the religious people, of ridiculing them and so forth, and they found out that was not so successful. Many of the believers were offended by that and reacted unfavorably. In recent years, under Stalinism, Stalin, especially during the war, even revived the old Russian church and gave it some new privileges to use on the diplomatic front throughout the world. But I don't know exactly what is the present policy of the Soviet Union. I see they have some religious leaders from Russia in the United States recently, who just went back, I think, the other day. I don't see any reason to object to that at all. I believe under an absolutely pure and honest communist government, if the leaders of American churches want to come to visit Russia, they should let them come, and if the church leaders in Russia want to travel around the world and visit other countries, they should certainly be allowed to do so.

Certainly, when we stand for freedom in the society, when we accomplish the socialist revolution, we're certainly going to inscribe on the banner free speech and free press, and that will certainly include freedom of religion. That certainly doesn't mean that the state will support religion, or that the leaders of the socialist proletariat will deprive themselves of the right of anti-religious propaganda. But that's as far as they will go. I think the formula that the socialist movement ought to inscribe on its banner in that respect, both in the present and in the future, is freedom for religious practice by anyone who has any ideas on the subject, whatever they may be, and freedom of anti-religious propaganda for people who don't believe in any religion, which includes me. That makes the record clear on that point. And I hope that I'm permitted to make that statement under the principle of free speech without meaning any disrespect to the institution in which I'm speaking, and hoping there will be no unhappy consequences from the sky.

You know, there was once a professional anti-religious crusader in the old days. We used to call them Christ killers in the old days, who made a business of soapboxing against religion and so forth. And one of these fellows was challenged to say, why don't you stand up and say, I defy God to strike me dead? He said, I don't believe in God, but I'm not going to say that, because he might do it. So take note, I didn't make any such blasphemy of faith.

Now a comrade here wanted to help me out, I think. A comrade member of our party asks what's the program of the SWP. But that's the subject of a whole lecture and I wouldn't try to answer it in a few minutes. I would say in essence it is this. The program of the Socialist Party [?], of the Socialist Workers Party, what a difference one word can make, that can make the difference between supporting an imperialist war or going to prison in opposition to it. What a difference that can make. Huh? The Socialist Workers' Party is a strictly Marxist organization founded on the basic principles of Marxism as laid down by the founders of scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, as developed by the great disciples of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. That's the fundamental basis of the program of the Socialist Party [?]. And its position on issues in this country all proceeds from the standpoint of the class struggle against class collaboration. If you take that as a guiding line and are familiar even roughly with the great principles of scientific socialism, you can come pretty close to understanding what reaction our party will take to any question of the day. A strictly class struggle basis. That's why we won't go into the Democratic Party, because that's class collaboration. That's joining with a class enemy in a common party. That's against Marxism, against Lenin, against Trotsky, against common sense. [inaudible]

The Communist Manifesto and the majority

Now, a comrade asked over here, about here, didn't Lenin say we don't need a formal majority? The Communist Party is the vanguard of the working class and it represents the majority, isn't that it? Well, now, Lenin didn't say it exactly that way. The great Marxists have never contended that we're going to be able to institute socialism by minority action. That's falsely attributed to us. The Communist Manifesto is the foundation document of scientific socialism. Everything begins there. All our great enlightening thought begins there. And it's too bad that we could have a single member of the socialist or radical movement who doesn't know the Communist Manifesto almost by heart. Because that's the starting point, the concentrated essence of the great thought of Marx and Engels over 100 years ago. In the Communist Manifesto, that's where the principle of the class struggle is elucidated. Nobody could read the Communist Manifesto, the first document of scientific socialism, 108 years old, nobody could ever read that and still pay any attention to advice to join and support the Democratic Party in this country. They simply don't mix, because the whole thesis of the Communist Manifesto is the class struggle. And out of the class struggle of classes comes the transformation of society by the victory of the working class, and every class struggle is a political struggle. And the political struggle can only be defined by a party. And the political struggle of the workers requires the organization of the workers' political party. When you advise workers to join the Democratic Party, you're advising them to turn exactly backwards. That's the greatest prostitution. And I say, by God, the greatest betrayal of the young, well-meaning radical workers, to teach them such criminal trash. You're saying, join the Dixiecrat party and the capitalist aristocrats' party and Henry Ford's party and the party that led the American people into three wars within the memory of living people. You say that's the party for me to join and hustle for. No, that's not the Communist Manifesto. That's not Marx. That's not Lenin. That's Dennis and Foster and Stalin. But not Lenin, not Marx.

By God, I'll tell you what. We want to have some real fun. Some members of the Communist Party are present here. Make a proposal in your organization to have me and one of your leaders debate that single question: is it proper for communist workers to join and support the Democratic Party in this country? I'd love to do that, and I'd let him make the first speech and the summary and everything else. I'd be satisfied if I got in a few words edgewise [?]. But we won't have that debate yet. There has to be a little more pressure. These people talk about a free discussion but they're scared to death of it. That's my opinion anyhow, and I hope I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, let me know and we'll arrange a debate.

Now then, the Communist Manifesto, that's what I started to talk about. The Communist Manifesto said the movement for socialism is different. All of the revolutions in history have been movements of minorities in the interests of minorities. The socialist revolution is a movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense majority. That's almost word for word from the Communist Party [?]. And that's essentially the meaning of the question.

Now, Lenin lived in a country which was predominantly peasant, which was run not by a majority of people, but by about one-tenth of a percent of the people, the Tsarist [?] upper crust and the middle. The workers outnumbered that gang that was running the country. The great mass of the peasantry were mute and voteless. Lenin in those conditions said, we will overthrow this gang, providing we get the support of a majority of the working class with the support of the peasants. He didn't say the Communist Party is the minority and will take power, because when he went back to Russia in April 1917, the Communist Party was a small minority, and Kerensky and his gang were in power. You recall that. You wanted Lenin right then? He wrote, in Pravda, he said, we do not intend to overthrow this government. If they will give us our legal rights of propaganda, we will give a pledge not to do it. We think it's a bad government and we want it to be changed, but for the time being we limit ourselves to patient explanation until we gain a majority support of the working people. That's what Lenin said, and he didn't try a revolution in April, and he didn't try it in June or July. But by the time they came to November 7th, the Bolsheviks had the great majority of the working class in Petrograd and Moscow and the big centers supporting them. The small underground group of the Bolsheviks had become a great power because their slogans corresponded to the feeling and the interest of the great mass of the people.

And Lenin cited all kinds of figures when they took over the power to prove by votes here and votes there that they had the majority. And when they got the majority of the working class, they said, that's the majority of the people in this country, we take the power. But if they hadn't had this real majority, they couldn't have kept it. And it was clearly demonstrated that they had the active, conscious support of the majority of the working class in Russia and had the support of the peasantry, not in the same sense that the workers did it, consciously and deliberately, but the sympathy of the peasants and the refusal to rise against the regime assured their victory. And that's what we'll say in this country and every place else. We can't go around advocating minority revolution. That's not Marxist. When we get a majority of the working people on our side, that's a majority of the population in this country, isn't it?

[Tape break]

Who else counts? Numerically or socially or otherwise. When we get a majority of the effective working people in this country, it'll be time to say it's time for a social transformation. And when we're not a majority, as we're a small minority at present, all we can do is what Lenin did in 1917, patiently explain and hope that we will gain more understanding and grow stronger and become a majority.

Did the Soviet Union progress under Stalin?

Now, a comrade asked the very question over here. It was implied in one of the other questions. But didn't the Soviet Union progress under Stalin? The Soviet Union, when it first came into existence 39 years ago, was a backward country inherited from Tsarism. It has progressed tremendously in an industrial way, and doesn't this prove that Stalin was right? He didn't say that, but won't some other people rise up and say, doesn't this prove that Stalin was right? And after all, suppose he did slaughter a few hundred thousand or a few million people and frame them up. The overall results are good. Well, the overall result wouldn't be good, because the murder of honest communists and socialists is never a progressive thing. I wouldn't be in favor of that. But the truth of the matter is that that's a very fallacious argument which the Communist Party fakers in this country doped up their membership with for years and years, that the industrial progress of the Soviet Union proves that everything is all right and you don't need to worry about these people that are being framed and tortured. After all, who are they? They're complaining, aren't they? All right, frame them up and shoot them. But we're making progress.

You know what these cynics used to say? It makes my blood boil [?] to think of these scoundrels making jokes about the murder of the best men that ever lived, the old Bolsheviks in Russia. You can't make an omelet without cracking eggs, can you? So the eggs they cracked were the lives of the old Bolsheviks in Russia. But the fact of the matter is that the progress of the Soviet Union is due to the system of property relations established by the revolution. It was the revolution in 1917 that eliminated capitalist private property, nationalized what industry they had, made it possible to introduce planned economy, and to develop industry without the capitalist private property. And not only did they inherit a backward industry, but a half of what they had was destroyed and ruined in the Long [?] War and the Civil War. From 1914 to 1921, they were in a constant state of war, revolution, the Civil War, counter-revolution, invasion. By the time they got out of the end of their troubles in 1922, they were barely able to keep alive.

Now, in that period, they began to consider the question of how to develop the industry faster. That's when Lenin introduced his New Economic Policy, whereby he offered to capitalists in the rest of the world that they could come in there, they could have concessions to build certain industries and certain factories on a capitalist basis if they'd only bring the capital in and help them get started. But that didn't result in any help from outside, but they allowed a certain partial development of petty capitalism in the Soviet Union under the NEP. But what Russia really needed was a program of industrialization and planning. Now, did that come from Stalin? No. The truth of the matter, I can't go into it all at great length in the few minutes that are left in my summary, but if you want to study the question, we have literature. The program of industrialization came from Trotsky. He's the author of the first five-year plan. It was only in 1929 that Stalin was compelled by the uprising of the kulak to take over the program of the Left Opposition, after he'd expelled all of them and exiled them to Siberia and exiled Trotsky out of the country. Then they adopted the plan and have carried it out in a bureaucratic manner ever since.

But we have always said we don't want to change the industrialization program. What we want to change is the bureaucratic way of doing it. We want to have more democracy in the operation of it, in the shops, so that the creative initiative of the workers can be brought into it from below and make it more effective than a strictly rigid, purified regime where the worker can't open his mouth. What's proved in Russia is not that Stalin was good, but it proved that the planned economy is so powerful and so far superior to the economy under capitalist private ownership that not even Stalinism with this terrible regime could prevent it making progress. If it had been a real democratic regime, as it will be in the future, then you will see still greater miracles wrought in the Soviet Union. We will not change the industrialization or the planned economy or the nationalization, not by a long shot. All we will do is put some more democratic principles into its operations, arouse the initiative of the workers, give the workers more of the fruits of their labor, let them live a little better, let them have an automobile and a new pair of shoes, and take some of these swollen benefits from these bureaucrats away from them and even make some of them go back to work and shred off some of their fat stuff. It'll make a big difference, and everybody will be happier except the bureaucrats who are deprived of their privileges, and they'll be so few and so unpopular that when the revolution gets through, they'll be happy to get back in the ranks and adopt a level of equality with the others.

But don't forget, after all, the goal of socialism is equality. The goal of socialism is, as this comrade [?] so well said back here, from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs. Stalin deliberately instituted in the Soviet Union more and more distinctions of standard of living, rates of wages, and so on. The difference between the Red Army officers and the private in the ranks is greater than anywhere in the world. The difference between supervisors and foremen and engineers in the factory and the workers on the assembly line is greater even than it is here, except for the bigger capital. And that's deliberately promoted by Stalin. And those who got the benefits and the privileges, they were the ones supporting Stalin. And the workers were deprived of their rights, deprived of free unions, deprived of free speech. And if they looked cross-eyed, they were sent to the slave labor camps. Many of them, millions, died there. Why, by God, say something good about that? No. We say that the regime of nationalized property and planned economy established by the Great Revolution is such a progressive force in history that not even Stalinism could stop it from growing. But eliminating Stalinism, then it'll electrify the world, make such rapid progress, and gain so much in the sympathy of the workers of the rest of the world, capitalism will be done for.

Do you know what's the greatest prop to capitalism today in the world? The thing that makes it possible for capitalism to have some support in the working class of the world, in Europe and even in America, is the terrible crimes of Stalinism, the slave labor camps, the terrible barbarities that became known and so widely publicized and the depriving of all democratic rights and principles. They have so antagonized the intelligent advanced workers of Western Europe that they don't want any part of it. And the capitalists say, don't you see what that is? Communism? That means police state. That means go to Siberia. That means slave labor camps. You want to do it? Well, if any worker's got any sense, he'll say, no, I don't want any part of that. And the capitalists have been able to exploit the crimes of Stalinism to create prejudice against communism. Let that regime really be cleaned up. Let the workers [inaudible] to really establish Soviet democracy, and that's when there'll be a change.

Now when Khrushchev makes a speech, if you please, that's not the change. The change will be when there's a law coming down that says henceforth there shall be free trade unions, there shall be free [inaudible], there shall be free speech for the workers, there shall be [inaudible] workers to publish their own newspapers and organize their own party as they see fit. When that comes, then you'll see the great change in all the working class of the whole world that has been prejudiced against the Soviet Union because of Stalinism, and create such moral sympathy and support that I don't think capitalism would last very long in the Western world. This, I said in the early part of my speech, is the biggest, most important question in the world. It surely is. The struggle against Stalinism is the struggle for the world's social revolution. The more successful it is here in Russia and every place else, the sooner we'll have the socialist revolution and the socialist society.

Unrest in the Soviet Union

Now, a comrade asked about the Georgia uprising. I don't have any facts on that outside of what appeared in the papers, and I think it's imprudent to take at face value the reports we've had, since they come under censorship. Whether this was or represented actually a demonstration of students in favor of Stalin, or whether there was a demonstration for the opposite reason and was afterwards passed out as a demonstration for Stalin, we don't know. It's a sign of some discontent of some kind there, and that in itself is a symptom. We know there's plenty of that.

A comrade asked over there, do we have any proofs of the opinion I expressed that the unrest and pressure of the workers caused Khrushchev to make this speech? Well, I cited the proof of the uprising of the East German workers in June 1953. I cited the strike in the Vorkuta slave labor camps a month later. Now, if under the iron heel of the Stalinist dictatorship you could have two such demonstrations as that, and I have seen other material, which I haven't fully checked yet, which states that there were strikes in other concentration camps in the Soviet Union, if you have such demonstrations as that under the iron heel of a dictatorship, you have to draw the conclusion they are not isolated incidents, but they are the expression of a general movement. And if people will strike in concentration camps, if they'll strike in East Germany [?] under the tanks of the Red Army of Stalin, then they have a revolutionary mood, and that mood will explode [?]. And if the bureaucrats in power are alive, they will question which is the best way to deal with it. Shall we try suppression or shall we try reform?

That was the problem the Tsar had in 1905. After the strike they started, he promised a Duma. He promised all kinds of liberal reform. And in the June 17th days in Berlin, they suppressed it with the Red Army. But they evidently didn't suppress the mood and the dissatisfaction, and they tried another method. Let's try a reform, a few concessions. And they know that the whole hatred of all the Soviet masses is concentrated on the name of Stalin, so they undoubtedly decided... You ask, do I have actual facts? No, this is my deduction. I don't know much more about what's going on inside the Soviet Union than you do, except as I read and interpret. And I interpret when I see bureaucrats dealing with reforms, I say there must be some pressure there.

For example, if I were from another country or another planet, and I read in the newspapers that the United States has suddenly decided to give a labor law friendly to the organization of unions, if they have decided to adopt unemployment insurance and old-age pensions for workers, I would say immediately, I don't think that's just because the capitalists of the United States suddenly got good-hearted and wanted to give away something. There must have been a big upheaval sometime there. They must be afraid of the revolution and they're trying to stop it by reform. Now it happened that Roosevelt was a man who faced [inaudible] what he was trying to do. He said, I want to stop the revolution by getting some reforms. And they gave reforms. But who do you credit them to, Roosevelt? Well, I think the official Communist Party does today, but I credit them to the sit-down strikes of the CIO and the general insurrection of labor in the early days of the Roosevelt regime [?].

And that's the way I reason about Russia, not from facts which have not yet been disclosed, but by deduction from two things. One, we know of the revolt in East Germany. We know of the Vorkuta strike, because that's public knowledge. We know that the bureaucrats have given some reforms, and we put these two together, plus the fact that the Russian working class is a very big and powerful working class, isn't it? 48 million strong. That has [inaudible] the country out of [inaudible] nothingness to second power in the world, with the strength of their heroism and the strength of their industry. And up to now, they haven't gotten anything out of it except a little black bread. And isn't it [inaudible] that these Russian workers want something more? Why do you even credit the American workers with wanting good conditions of life? The American workers, who are the least political and least class conscious in the world, get very tough if there is any talk of reducing their wages or even not giving them a little share in the increase of the production. And what should you expect [?] the only working class in the world? American, French, Italian, German, every working class movement, every working class in the world wants to have free trade unions, wants better living conditions, is willing to fight for them and eventually will make a revolution and establish socialism, and not expect anything from the working class in the Soviet Union, which has a tradition of free revolutions behind it in one half century.

Why, it's ridiculous. You ought to expect more from the Russians than anyone else, because they'll have the richest heritage. And don't forget it, even all these tens of thousands of the old Bolsheviks who were so criminally slain left a tremendous memory that's treasured by the Russian workers. They remember them. They remember Trotsky. They remember the great day, and they associate them all with revolution. And revolution's not dead in the Soviet Union. It was only sleeping under Stalin, and it will rise again and shake the world again.

A proposal for discussion and regroupment

Now, one more question is all I have to get to, and that's the one this comrade asks me, as to what [inaudible] when we address our proposal for a discussion and regroupment. Well, I might say that it's intended, as I presented it here, as what you might call an algebraic formula. It's a proposal that we reestablish discussion in our radical circle. Let's work for more solidarity among ourselves against the common enemy of the capitalist class. Let's have more friendly relations between us, and let's have more discussions, more forums, more debates, more exchange of opinions, in the hope that out of this free exchange of opinion, discussion, and cooperation and solidarity in activities of common interest, we will rise closer to an understanding for a common program for the recruitment of the radical workers in one socialist party. I don't mention any specific organizations.

The reason I spoke about a regroupment is that we don't want to make it a condition for a discussion as a beginning to say you have to join the Socialist Workers Party and accept everything we say. Now let's put all the ideas on the table, so that each organization, as it exists or as it may come into existence, as group or tendency, whatever it may be, retains its own position, and thus hope that out of the discussion, progress will come toward an understanding, toward more solidarity and regroupment. That's all I meant to say, a general proposal to accept the formula of the Daily Worker that all socialist-minded workers should join in the discussion, except don't put out that fake, limited discussion. Let us have a real discussion and a real freedom. And the first principle of free discussion among different tendencies is Detroit [?], isn't it?

It's not enough for you to come to a forum where I speak and you ask a question for two minutes and I take an hour to answer you. That's not enough. Well, that's better than the Communist Party gave its own members [?] up till now. But that's one thing. The way to get a real exchange of opinion is at free and equal debate. Let the representatives of different tendencies stand on the platform at equal time and talk. And I want a debate. I want this word carried back to the Communist Party, which is talking about a revival of discussion among socialist-minded workers. I want to debate on one question. I don't want to debate on dozens. I've got one particular. I want to know why should a communist worker, a socialist worker, or any other worker join the Democratic Party and vote for it? I'll give you plenty of time to explain that to me, and then I want you to give me the time to explain what Marx and Engels and Lenin had to say on such questions as that, and in addition to them I'll also quote Debs, and I'll quote the position of the early Communist Party before it became Stalinized, when it was a good party, an honest democratic party and a revolutionary party, as we hope a part of it at least will be again. Well, Comrade Chairman [?], I've taken up all the time as well. Thank you very much.