Joseph Stalin

“ Lest there be any doubt that the time has been chosen, let us go directly to the leader of communism today—Joseph Stalin. Here is what he said—not back in 1928, not before the war, not during the war—but 2 years after the last war was ended: “To think that the Communist revolution can be carried out peacefully, within the framework of a Christian democracy, means one has either gone out of one’s mind and lost all normal understanding, or has grossly and openly repudiated the Communist revolution.” ”

“ It would be easy for those who had been Communists before Hitler came to power to return to the Communist cause after Hitler fell. A Communist program promising immediate peace for the German people and vengeance on the Nazi leaders would appeal more and more to the masses of German workingmen as the war lengthens and shows no signs of ending. We should not forget that the Soviet government, or rather Joseph Stalin, unless he capitulates, will have something to say when the time comes to think about the kind of government Germany is to have. ”

“ The whole course of the Chinese revolution, its character, its prospects, undoubtedly indicate that the Chinese Communists ought to remain in the Kuomintang and intensify their work in it. But can the Chinese Communist Party take part in the future revolutionary government? It not only can, it must. The course of the revolution in China, its character, its prospects, speak eloquently in favor of the Chinese Communist Party taking part in the future revolutionary government of China. This is one of the necessary guarantees for the hegemony of the Chinese proletariat becoming a concrete reality. ”

“ Lenin was right when he said that, if in former times, before the beginning of the epoch of the world revolution, national movements for freedom were part of the general democratic movement, now, after the victory of the Soviet revolution in Russia, and since the beginning of the epoch of world revolution, national movements for freedom are part of the proletarian world revolution. ”

“ It is therefore trying to outpace evolution to speak of soviets at the present time. At the present moment, we must not raise the question of soviets, but of the formation of peasant committees; I mean committees, elected by the peasants, which are capable of formulating the fundamental demands of the peasantry and of taking all the necessary measures for realizing these demands by revolutionary methods. These peasant committees should form the axis round which the revolution in the village can unfold. ”

“ In the present circumstances of the revolutionary movement in capitalistic countries, where the direct entry of foreign troops might rouse a number of protests and stir up conflict, intervention has assumed a more elastic character and a more masked form. In the present circumstances, imperialism prefers to intervene against the revolution by organizing civil war within the dependent country, by financing the counter-revolutionary forces against the revolution, by moral and financial support of its Chinese agents. ”

“ It would be a great mistake should the Chinese Communists not take advantage of the present favorable situation to help the workers to improve their material and legal position, even though it be through strikes. Why in all conscience, have we a revolution in China? A proletariat which allows its members to be beaten and illtreated by the agents of imperialism when they are on strike, cannot be a leader. ”

“ This is explained by the fact that the army, when it has liberated new provinces and established itself in them, is compelled to maintain itself in some way or other at the expense of the population of the district. We Soviet revolutionaries, usually succeeded in making up for these disadvantages by endeavoring to help the peasants against the landowners by means of the army. ”

“ How is the power of the counter-revolutionary generals to be explained? In that they are backed by the imperialists of all countries, the owners of all possible railways, concessions, factories, banks and business houses in China, For this reason it does not depend alone, it does not even demand to any large extent on whether foreign troops enter the country, but on the support given by the imperialists of all countries to the Chinese counter-revolution. Intervention by using other people—that is the kernel of imperialist intervention at present. ”

“ For this reason the Communists and the Chinese revolutionaries as a whole must take all possible measures to neutralize the elements in the army which are hostile to the peasants, to preserve the revolutionary spirit in the army and to direct things in such a way that the army helps the peasants and mobilizes them for the revolution. It is said that the revolutionary army in China is welcomed with open arms, but that later, after it has established itself, there is certain disillusionment. ”

“ A massacre of innocents, a wholesale destruction of property. Where do these statesmen get the nerve to face the world with their phrase of protecting life and property?
The Chinese revolt is of world importance. It effects the struggle of the oppressed and exploited the world over. The nationalist army in China fights for these masses. And they must fight for the Chinese. They must organize so that their will, their action, may prevent their respective imperialist masters to mobilize their forces against the Chinese revolution. ”

“ The People's Commissariat of Railroads (comrade Kaganovich) is to organize the transport of the special settlers from Crimea to the Uzbek SSR, using specially formed trains, according to a schedule devised jointly with the USSR NKVD. The number of trains, loading stations, and destination points are to be determined by the USSR NKVD.
Payment for the transport will be based on the rate at which the prisoners are transported ”

“ Property, buildings, outbuildings, furniture, and farmstead lands left behind will be taken over by the local authorities; all beef and dairy cattle, as well as poultry, will be taken over by the People's Commissariat of the Meat and Dairy Industries, all agricultural production by the USSR People's Commissariat of Procurement, horses and other draft animals by the USSR People's Commissariat of Agriculture, and breeding cattle by the USSR People's Commissariat of State Grain and Animal Husbandry Farms. ”

“ It has been demonstrated time and again, has it not, to your satisfaction, that Stalin has endeavored to use international communism as a tool in order to advance his own foreign policy which necessarily, of course, meant his strengthening his own position in the Soviet Union. ”

“ Stalin is especially aware of the fact that in the event of war he cannot count upon the full support of the Soviet population. His experiences in this regard during the war with Germany are still fresh in his memory. He will not commit the same blunders as Hitler because he knows that through war he can risk all his previous achievements. Moreover, he has no cogent reasons at all to resort to war, for the Soviet Union is economically self-sufficient and is independent of the rest of the world, indeed, she possesses all the raw materials necessary for rearmament. ”

“ Stalin's power rests exclusively upon his awn strong personality. After he came into power he suppressed every trace of opposition and exterminated even his closest friends and co-workers whenever he felt the slightest danger from them for his personal position. The Soviet Union's present strength rests, in a great measure, on Stalin's dictatorial manner of ruling which, in case of his death, will be the source of her future weakness. For, there is nobody in the Soviet Union who enjoys an authority which would enable him to take possession of Stalin's heritage at once. ”

“ Today, Stalin has ambitions for global mastery. His first tools of conquest are the Communists in every country. In February, 1947, as the Communist Convention in London, delegates from thirty-two countries met to reaffirm their pledges to support the Communist Party. These Communists are not members of [Pg 80] a political party in the American sense; they are sinister and potentially powerful weapons of the Soviet Government.
Everywhere today, the “New Democracy,” or early Communism, has followed the pattern of the rise of each Asiatic despot. ”

“ But he showed his genius by following not the logic of his position but the needs of successful organization. He displayed great aptitude in using and winning for his purposes those in his own ranks who disagreed with him. He could work with people who without him could not work with each other. It was left to Stalin to draw the logical conclusion, and to convict any opponent on any matter of being an enemy of humanity. But that was when Lenin’s party did not have to make a revolution. ”

“ Marx’s doctrine that no ruling class ever voluntarily surrenders its power turned out to be true for the dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party, too. The reversal in the policy of the Communist International was signalled by Stalin, who had succeeded to Lenin’s mantle, despite the latter’s political testament. From then on “the defence of the Soviet Union” became transformed from a slogan, which had rallied the Western workers during the years of Allied intervention, into the guiding principle behind the activities of Communists throughout the world. ”

“ One of the principal differences lies in the fact that the Socialist Workers Party people accused the Communist Party people, in particular Stalin and Stalinism, of having deserted the principle of socialism, of internationalism, accusing Stalin of degenerating into nationalism. ”

“ He even made commitments, and part of the deal which people seemed to be so concerned about at Yalta and Potsdam and Cairo and Casablanca involved Stalin making commitments to Roosevelt and Churchill to the effect that the Soviet Union would use its influence to suppress the revolutionary effort of the workers in the various countries that were on the brink of revolution.
And that is why when the Soviet Red Army marched into those border countries in eastern Europe they did not attempt to create a Soviet revolution. They, instead, created something they called people’s democracies. ”

“ While in Moscow, Li Li had married a Russian woman and, in the Far Eastern University had trained Communist agents and sent them back to their homelands as agitators. He maintained a close liaison with the Kremlin. As Russia’s war with Japan was nearing an end, Stalin, ignoring Li Li’s petty dispute with Mao, sent him, with Marshal Malinovsky’s Russian Army of Mongols, into Manchuria six days before the Japanese [Pg 62] surrendered. His job was to take over this “Prize of Asia,” rich in everything the Russians or anybody else needed and which no contester for world power could do without. ”

“ Those Americans who changed their views of the Soviet Union either when Stalin signed his pact with Hitler in August 1939, or when the Red Army attacked Finland, or when it marched into Poland, the Baltic states, and Bessarabia, or again when the Germans attacked Russia and the Red Army fought back—such observers only proved that their judgment of Stalin’s system was founded on mere day-to-day, surface events. ”

“ Stalin surely has more enemies who would like to see him dead than any man in the world except Hitler. Stalin probably has more personal enemies than Hitler, because Stalin has executed more people. When you think of the millions who died as victims of the Revolution, and of the millions who died in the famine of 1932-33, when Stalin ordered [71] the peasants of the Ukraine to be stripped of all their food to teach them a lesson, it seems singular that no bereaved survivor should have lifted his hand against the tyrant. ”

“ GEN. RUDENKO: In other words, before this formal offer was ever made, you already, de facto, considered yourself a member of the Nazi Party?
KEITEL: I have always thought of myself as a soldier; not as a political soldier or politician.
GEN. RUDENKO: Should we not conclude, after all that has been said here, that you were a Hitler-General, not because duty called you but on account of your own convictions?
KEITEL: I have stated here that I was a loyal and obedient soldier of my Führer. And I do not think that there are generals in Russia who do not give Marshal Stalin implicit obedience. ”

“ Stalin has come back, sort of like a totalitarian Communist Messiah. All people have a culture-hero who's supposed to come back in times of trouble and lead his nation to glory. Even though Stalin's been gone only a year and a half, he's the Russian culture-hero. If somehow they can rig up a setup—the men in the Kremlin, I mean—which convinces the people he has come back and wants war, there's no telling what Russia might do. ”

“ We can no longer afford to assume a casual attitude, even though history reveals that the Communism of Stalin, like other world shaking movements in the past, if given sufficient time, will fall of its own weight. ”

“ Stalin if his people were fighting less bravely now than they did in the World War. On the contrary, they fight in part out of fear and in part with bestial, fanatical madness. And, if I now assume that in Russia, as here with us, there are three to four wounded for every fatal casualty, then the result is an absolute loss of at least eight to ten million, without considering those only slightly wounded, who might be cured and put back into action. ”

“ In fact, the Trotskyites, as I understand, their philosophy in the matter is that the Soviet Union has suffered from an arrested development—it is not truly Socialist; it has not been permitted to become Socialist, and that the biggest crime Stalin committed was to pretend and hold the Soviet Union up to world view as a Socialist country when, in fact, it was not a Socialist country. ”