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Ford and Stalin. How to Live in Humaneness · перевод (English) · раздел 26 из 42
Перевод исходного произведения; точность перевода оценивается отдельно.
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Given definitions is not just an exercise in casuistry. The matter is that different phenomena of social life should be defined in such manner that their differences and interconnections were clear, and thus they should have different names. These definitions, which distinguish different phenomena of social life, allow us to have a different look at the events that took place in the USSR during Stalin’s epoch, where:
· according to public opinion, new social structure, different from all historically known by that time, was built and named «socialist» directing its efforts towards communist prospective;
· Marxism was the theoretical basis of its development; moreover, it was its cult basis.
The first condition as such does not cause any disputes. The attempt of new society development is admitted by everyone, although the ideals, which sincere followers of socialism tried to make a reality during 1917 - 1953 are evaluated differently by different people. Some people say, it is an unrealizable chimera, adverse to the human nature, and therefore the attempt to carry it out is the evil and brings nothing but violence and suffering; in short, it is the slave barrack, a kind of fascism, a mistake of history. Other people say, it is objectively possible best future of the whole mankind, which, to be realized, requires subjective factors - development of culture and purposeful work, where mistakes or misuses could occur, sometimes with very grave consequences for both contemporaries and offspring.
Those who support the idea that USSR was created in 1917 as the result of the mistake of the history, and the whole its history was a mistake, would not be interested in discussion of circumstances connected with the Marxism as such and its interpretation by Stalin in his many-sided activities.
Instead, those who think that history did not make a mistake in 1917, having started open practice of building socialism and communism in the USSR and all over the world [208], are arguing about who was the true Marxist and communist in the USSR: J.V. Stalin and his associates? or L.D. Bronstein (better known under the nickname «Trotsky») and his associates? Relating to the present time, this dispute among the followers of Marxism results in the following question: to recommence building of communism means to continue work of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Trotsky? or to continue work of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin?
The answer to this question is many-sided and consists in the fact that:
· L.D. Bronstein was a true Marxist, and due to managerial inconsistency of philosophy and political economy of Marxism he was a pseudo-communist and died as a hostage of falsity of Marxism that he did not realize;
· V.I. Lenin (Ulyanov) was a true communist as much as he had capabilities not to be a psycho-Trotskyist, true to the canons of Marxism in steadfast readiness to press the stream of life in accordance with them;
· J.V. Stalin was a true Bolshevik and communist, therefore, he was not a Marxist;
· J.V. Stalin was not the successor of Marx - Engels - Lenin’s tack, but the successor of Bolshevistic tack of Stephan Razin - Lenin (in such its constituent, when V.I. Lenin stepped over Marxism), since V.I. Lenin under the cover of Marxism was building Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) as an instrument for realization of political will of Bolshevism, which in principle could become conceptually autocratic (what actually happened when J.V. Stalin had headed the ruling party and State system of the USSR), and afterwards to exceed the bounds of Marxism.
The first one to sense it was L.D. Bronstein (Trotsky). In his work “Our Political Tasks” (written as early as in 1904) he assessed V.I. Lenin’s attitude to Marxism as follows:
«Indeed, it is impossible to treat the best legacy of proletariat more cynically than Lenin does! To him, Marxism is not the method of scientific research, inflicting serious theoretical obligations; it is… a mop, when he needs to wipe out his tracks, a white screen, when he needs to display his grandeur, folding rule, when he needs to produce his party conscience!» (L.D. Trotsky, “On the History of Russian Revolution”, collected works of L.D. Bronstein edited by N.A. Vasetsky, Moscow, “Politizdat”, 1990, p. 77).
And that is not the whole story. From V.I.Lenin’s pen came some equivocal statements, fraught with failure of Marxism by its nature. Here is one of them:
«We do not take Marx’s theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are sure that it only placed the corner stones of the science, which the socialists should advance further in all directions unless they want to be behind the times» (V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, 5th edition, vol. 4, p. 184).
But if it turns out that the «corner stone» is unsuitable for the intended course, another «corner stone» will be found inevitably, this is just a matter of time. And this happened during the development of Bolshevism. However, neither L.D. Bronstein, nor his associates or successors and continuators of his work could find any means to suppress development of Bolshevism in the society.