In Defence of Trotskyisn No.15

8/20/2019 In Defence of Trotskyisn No.15

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In Defence ofTrotskyism No 15£1 waged, 50p unwaged/low waged, €1.50

The general historic role of the Stalinist bureaucracy and their Comintern iscounter-revolutionary. But through their military and other interests they canbe forced to support progressive movements. Even Ludendorff felt himselfforced to give Lenin a train – a very progressive action – and Lenin accepted.

We must keep our eyes open to discern the progressive acts of the Stalinists,support them independently, foresee in time the danger, the betrayals, warnthe masses and gain their confidence. Trotsky, Writings, Letter on India, 1939/40, pp 108-9.


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Page 2 Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao?

Where We Stand1. WE STAND WITHKARL MARX: ‘The eman-cipation of the workingclasses must be conqueredby the working classes

themselves. The struggle forthe emancipation of the

working class means not astruggle for class privilegesand monopolies but forequal rights and duties andthe abolition of all classrule’ (The International

Workingmen’s Association1864, General Rules).2. The capitalist stateconsists, in the last analysis,of ruling-class laws within ajudicial system and deten-tion centres overseen by thearmed bodies of police/army who are under thedirection and are controlledin acts of defence of capital-

ist property rights againstthe interests of the majorityof civil society. The workingclass must overthrow thecapitalist state and replace it

with a workers’ state basedon democratic soviets/

workers’ councils to sup-press the inevitable counter-

revolution of private capi-talist profit against plannedproduction for the satisfac-tion of socialised humanneed.3. We recognise the ne-

cessity for revolutionaries tocarry out serious ideologicaland political struggle asdirect participants in thetrade unions (always) and inthe mass reformist socialdemocratic bourgeois work-ers’ parties despite their pro-capitalist leaderships whenconditions are favourable.

Because we see the tradeunion bureaucracy and theirallies in the Labour partyleadership as the most fun-damental obstacle to thestruggle for power of the

working class, outside ofthe state forces and theirdirect agencies themselves,

we must fight and defeatand replace them with arevolutionary leadership bymobilising the base againstthe pro-capitalist bureau-cratic misleaders to openthe way forward for thestruggle for workers’ power.4. We are fully in supportof all mass mobilisations

against the onslaught of thisreactionary Con-Lib Demcoalition. However, whilstparticipating in this struggle

we will oppose all policies which subordinate the

working class to the politi-cal agenda of the petty-bourgeois reformist leadersof the Labour party andtrade unions5. We oppose all immi-gration controls. Interna-tional finance capital roamsthe planet in search of prof-it and imperialist govern-

ments disrupts the lives of workers and cause the col-lapse of whole nations withtheir direct intervention inthe Balkans, Iraq and Af-ghanistan and their proxy

wars in Somalia and theDemocratic Republic of theCongo, etc. Workers have

the right to sell their labourinternationally whereverthey get the best price. Onlyunion membership and payrates can counter employers

who seek to exploit immi-grant workers as cheap la-bour to undermine thegains of past struggles.

Socialist Fight produces IDOT. It is a partof the Liaison Committee for the FourthInternational with the Liga Comunista,Brazil and the Tendencia Militante Bol-

chevique, Argentina.Editor: Gerry Downing

Assistant Editor: John BarrySocialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London,

NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected].

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Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Page 3

M

aoism was part of a broader movement

in the twentieth century of what mightbe called “bourgeois revolutions with

red flags,” as in Vietnam or North Korea. To understand this, it is important to see thatMaoism was one important result of the defeat ofthe world revolutionary wave in 30 countries(including China itself) which occurred in theyears after World War I. The major defeat was inGermany (1918-1921), followed by the defeat ofthe Russian Revolution (1921 and thereafter),culminating in Stalinism.Maoism is a variant of Stalinism. 1 The first phaseof this defeat, where Mao and China are con-cerned, took place in the years 1925-1927, during which the small but very strategically located Chi-nese working class was increasingly radicalized ina wave of strikes. This defeat closed the 1917-1927 cycle of post-World War I worker struggles, which included (in addition to Germany and Rus-sia) mass strikes in Britain, workers councils innorthern Italy, vast ferment and strikes in Spain,

the “rice riots” in Japan, a general strike in Seattle,and many other confrontations.

By 1925-1927, Stalin controlled the Communist Third International (Comintern). From the begin-ning of the 1920s, Russian advisors worked close-ly with the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) of thebourgeois revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, (leader ofthe 1911 overthrow of the Manchu dynasty) and with the small but important Chinese CommunistParty (CCP), founded in 1921.

The Third International provided political andmilitary aid to the KMT, which was taken over byChiang kai-shek (future dictator of Taiwan after1949); the Comintern in the early to mid-1920s

viewed the KMT as a “progressive anti-imperialist” force. Many Chinese Communistsactually joined the KMT in these years, somesecretly, some openly.

Soviet foreign policy in the mid-1920s involved

This is written from the left state capi-

talist perspective of the League for theRevolutionary Party in the USA so wedo not agree, for instance, that the rev-olutions in Vietnam or North Korea

were “bourgeois revolutions with redflags,” but say the revolutions createddeformed workers states. But it reallyis an excellent expose of the bogus“revolutionary” essence of Maoism. Itis to be found online in the PortlandIntyermedia Development Centre; De- velopment of Maoist Theory and Prac- tice in the Philippines , author: JoseMaria Sison. http://

portland.indymedia.org/en/2012/11/420253.shtml?discuss

Notes towards a critique of Maoism

11 Nov 2012 By Loren Goldner


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an internal faction fight between Stalin and Trot-sky. Trotsky’s policy (whatever its flaws, and there were many) was for world revolution as the onlysolution to the isolation of the Soviet Union. Sta-lin replied with the slogan “Socialism in OneCountry,” an aberration unheard of until that time

in the internationalist Marxist tradition. Stalin inthis period was allied with the right oppositionleader Nikolai Bukharin against Trotsky; Sovietand Third International policy reflected this alli-ance in a “right turn” to strong support for bour-geois nationalism abroad. Chiang kai-shek himself was an honorary member of the Third Interna-tional Executive Board in this period. The ThirdInternational advocated strong support forChiang’s KMT in its campaign against the

“warlords” closely allied with the landowninggentry.It is important to understand that in these same

years, Mao Zedong (who was not yet the centralleader of the party) criticized this policy from theright, advocating an even closer alliance betweenthe CCP and the KMT.

In the spring of 1927, Chiang kai-shek turnedagainst the CCP and the radicalized working class,massacring thousands of workers and CCP mili-tants in Shanghai and Canton (now known in the

West by its actual Chinese name Guangzhou), who had been completely disarmed by the Comin-tern’s support for the KMT.2 This massacre endedthe CCP’s relationship with the Chinese workingclass and opened the way for Mao to rise to topleadership by the early 1930s.

The next phase of the CCP was the so-called“Third Period” of the Comintern, which waslaunched in part in response to the debacle inChina. In the Soviet Union, Stalin turned on the

Bukharinist “right” (there was in reality no onemore reactionary than Stalin) after having finishedoff the Trotskyist left.3 The Third Period, whichlasted from 1928 to 1934, was a period of “ultra-left” adventurism around the world. In China as well as in a number of other colonial and semi-colonial countries, the Third Period involved theslogan of “soviets everywhere.” Not a bad sloganin itself, but its practical, voluntarist implementa-tion was a series of disastrous, isolated uprisings in

China and Vietnam in 1930 which were totally outof synch with local conditions, and which led to

bloody defeats everywhere.It was in the recovery from these defeats that

Mao became the top leader of the CCP, and beganthe “Long March” to Yan’an (in remote north- western China) which became a central Maoistmyth, and reoriented the CCP to the Chinese

peasantry, a much more numerous social class butnot, in Marxist terms, a revolutionary class4(though it could be an ally of the working-classrevolution, as in Russia during the 1917-1921 Civil War).

Japan had invaded Manchuria (northeast China)in 1931 and the CCP from then until the Japanesedefeat at the end of World War II was involved ina three-way struggle with the KMT and the Japa-nese.

After the Third Period policy led to the triumphof Hitler in Germany (where the Communist Partyhad attacked the “social fascist” Social Democrats,not the Nazis, as the “main enemy,” and even worked with the Nazis against the Social Demo-crats in strikes), the Comintern in 1935 shifted itsline again to the “Popular Front,” which meantalliances with “bourgeois democratic” forcesagainst fascism. Throughout the colonial and semi-colonial world, the Communist Parties completelydropped their previous anti-colonial struggle and

threw themselves into support for the Westernbourgeois democracies. In Vietnam and Algeria,for example, they supported the “democratic”French colonial power. In Spain, they uncriticallysupported the Republic in the Spanish Revolutionand Civil War, during which they helped the Re-public crush the anarchists (who had two millionmembers), the independent left POUM (PartidoObrero de Unificacion Marxista, a “centrist” partydenounced at the time as “Trotskyist”) and the

Trotskyists themselves. These latter forces hadtaken over the factories in northeastern Spain andestablished agrarian communes in the countryside. The Republic and the Communists crushed themall, and then lost the Civil War to Franco.

In China, the Popular Front meant, for the CCP,supporting Chiang kai-shek (who, it will be re-called, had massacred thousands of workers eightyears earlier) against Japan.

In the Yan’an refuge of the CCP in these years

and through World War II, Mao consolidated hiscontrol over the party. His notorious hatchet man


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Kang Sheng helped him root out any oppositionor potential rivals with slanderous rumors, showtrials and executions. One memorable case wasthat of Wang Shiwei. He was a committed Com-munist and had translated parts of Marx’s Capital

into Chinese. Mao and Kang set him up and puthim through several show trials, breaking him anddriving him out of the party. (He was finally exe-cuted when the CCP left Yan’an in 1947 in thelast phase of the civil war against Chiang kai-shek.)Mao’s peasant army conquered all of China by1949. The Chinese working class, which had beenthe party’s base until 1927, played absolutely norole in this supposed “socialist revolution.” The

one-time “progressive nationalist” Kuomintang was totally discredited as it became the party of

the landed gentry, full of corruption, responsiblefor runaway inflation, and commanded by officersmore interested in enriching themselves thanfighting either the Japanese (before 1945) or theCCP.

The first phase of Mao’s rule was from 1949 to1957. He made no secret of the fact that the newregime was based on the “bloc of four classes”and was carrying out a bourgeois nationalist revo-lution. It was essentially the program of the bour-geois nationalist Sun Yat-Sen from 25 years earli-er. The corrupt landowning gentry was expropri-ated and eliminated.

But it is important to remember that “land tothe peasants” and the expropriation of the pre-

capitalist landholders are the bourgeois revolution,as they have been since the French Revolution of


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1789. The regimefor this reason wasgenuinely popularand many overseasChinese who werenot Communists

returned to helprebuild the coun-try. Some“progressive capi-talists” were re-tained to continuerunning their fac-tories. After thechaos of the previ-ous 30 years, thisstabilization was a

breath of fresh air. The People’s Lib-eration Army alsointervened in theKorean War tohelp Kim il-sung fight the United States and theUnited Nations forces. But it is also important notto lose sight of the fact that the Korean War waspart of a war between the two Cold War blocs,and that what Kim implemented in North Korea

after 1953 was another Stalinist “bourgeois revolu-tion with red flags” based on land to the peasants.(North Korea went on to become the first prole-tarian hereditary monarchy, now in its third incar-nation.)

We also have to see the Chinese Revolution ininternational context. Stalinism (and Maoism is, asmentioned earlier, a variant of Stalinism) emergedfrom World War II stronger than ever, havingappropriated all of eastern Europe, winning in

China, on its way to power in (North) Korea and Vietnam, and had huge prestige in strugglesaround the colonial and semi-colonial world(which was renamed the Third World as the Cold War divided the globe into two antagonistic blocscentered on the United States and the Soviet Un-ion).

There is no question that Mao and the CCP were somewhat independent of Stalin and theSoviet Union. They were their own type of Stalin-ists. They were also a million miles from the pow-

er of soviets and workers’ councils that had initial-ly characterized the Russian and German Revolu-

tions, on which basisthe Comin-tern wasoriginallyfounded in

1919. Thatis a thornyquestionthat is toocomplex tobe unrav-eled here.But from1949 untilthe Sino-Soviet split

in 1960, theSoviet Un-ion sentthousandsof techni-

cians and advisors to China, and trained thousandsmore Chinese cadre in Soviet universities andinstitutes, as had been the case since the 1920s. The “model” established in power in the 1950s was essentially the Soviet model, adapted to a

country with an even more overwhelming peasantmajority than was the case in Russia.

World Stalinism was rocked in 1956 by a seriesof events: the Hungarian Revolution, in which the working class again established workers’ councilsbefore it was crushed by Russian intervention; thePolish “October,” in which a worker revoltbrought to power a “reformed” Stalinist leader-ship. These uprisings were preceded by Khru-schev’s speech to the twentieth Congress of world

Communist Parties, in which he revealed many ofStalin’s crimes, including the massacre of betweenfive to ten million peasants during the collectiviza-tions of the early 1930s.

There were many crimes he did not mention,since he was too implicated in them, and the pur-pose of his speech was to salvage the Stalinistbureaucracy while disavowing Stalin himself. This was the beginning of “peaceful co-existence” be-tween the Soviet bloc and the West, but the reve-lations of Stalin’s crimes and the worker revolts in

eastern Europe (following the 1953 worker upris-ing in East Germany) were the beginning of the


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end of the Stalinist myth. Bitterly disillusionedmilitants all over the world walked out of Com-munist Parties, after finding out that they haddevoted decades of their lives to a lie.

Khruschev’s 1956 speech is often referred to bylater Maoists as the triumph of “revisionism” in

the Soviet Union. The word “revisionism” is itselfideology run amok, since the main thing that wasbeing “revised” was Stalinist terror, which theMaoists and Marxist-Leninists by implicationconsider to be the “dictatorship of the proletari-at.” There were between 10 and 20 million peoplein forced labor camps in the Soviet Union in 1956,and presumably their release (for those who sur- vived years of slave labor, often at the Arctic Cir-cle) was part of “revisionism.” For the Maoists,the Khruschev speech is often also identified withthe “restoration of capitalism,” showing howsuperficial their “Marxism” is, with the existenceof capitalism being based not on any analysis ofreal social relationships but on the ideology of thisor that leader.

Khruschev’s speech was not well received byMao and the leaders of the CCP, whose own regi-mented rule of China was becoming increasinglyunpopular.5 Thus the regime launched a newphase, called the “Hundred Flowers” campaign, in

which the “bourgeois intellectuals” who had ral-lied to the regime, recoiling from the brutality ofthe KMT, were invited to “let a hundred flowersbloom” and openly voice their criticisms.

The outpouring of criticism was of such anunexpected volume that it was quickly shut downby Mao and the CCP, who began to characterizethe Hundred Flowers campaign as “letting thesnakes out of their holes” in order to “smash”them once and for all. Many critics were arrested

and sent off to forced labor camps.Internationally, however, Maoism began tobecome an international tendency, becoming at-tractive to some people who had left the pro-Soviet Communist Parties after Khrushchev’sspeech. This was a hard-core ultra-Stalinist minor-ity (who felt, for example, that their own country ’sCP had not supported the Soviet invasion to crushthe Hungarian Revolution forcefully enough). Bythe early 1960s, in the United States, Europe andaround the Third World, these currents wouldbecome the “Marxist-Leninist” parties aligned with China against both the United States and

Soviet “social imperialism.”In China itself, the regime needed to shift gears

after the disaster of the Hundred Flowers period. There was growing tension at the top levels of theCCP between Mao and the more Soviet-influenced technocratic bureaucrats, who were

focused on building up heavy industry. This wasthe factional situation that led to the “CulturalRevolution” that erupted in 1965.

Therefore Mao launched the country in 1958 onthe so-called “Great Leap Forward,” in whichSoviet-style heavy industry was to be replaced byenlisting peasants in small industrial “backyard”production everywhere. The peasants were forcedinto the “People’s Communes” and set to work tocatch up with the economic level of the capitalist West in 10-15 years. Everywhere pots, pans andutensils as well as family heirlooms were melteddown for backyard small kilns to produce steel, atkilling paces of work. The result was a huge drainof peasant labor away from raising crops, leadingto famine by 1960-1961 in which an estimated 10-20 million people starved to death.6

The debacle of the Great Leap Forward wasalso a terrible blow to Mao’s standing within theCCP. It represented an extreme form of the kindof voluntarism, at the expense of real material

conditions, which had always characterized Mao’sthinking, as summed up in his famous line about“painting portraits on the blank page of the peo-ple” (some Marxist!).7 The Soviet-influenced tech-nocrats around Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaopingbasically kicked Mao upstairs into a symbolic fig-urehead, too important to purge outright butstripped of all real power. Thus the battle lines were drawn for what became, a few years later, the“Cultural Revolution.”

The “Cultural Revolution” was Mao’s attempt ata comeback.8 It was a factional struggle at the toplevel of the CCP in which millions of universityand high school students were mobilized everywhere to attack “revisionism” and return Mao toreal power. But this factional struggle, and theprevious marginalization of Mao that lay behind it, was hardly advertised as the real reason for thisprocess in which tens of thousands of people werekilled and millions of lives were wrecked.9 China was thrown into ideology run amok on a scalearguably even greater than under Stalin at the peakof his power. Millions of educated people suspect-


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ed of “revisionism” (or merely the victims ofsome personal feud), including technicians andscientists, were sent off to the countryside(“rustification”) to “learn from the peasants,” which in reality involved them in crushing forcedlabor in which many were worked to death.

Politics was in command,” with party ideo-logues and not surgeons, in charge of medicaloperations in Chinese hospitals — with predictableconsequences. Schools were closed for three yearsin the cities — though not in the countryside(19660-1969) — while young people from universi-ties and high schools ran around the country hu-miliating and sometimes killing people designatedby the Maoist faction as a “revisionist” and a “LiuShaoqi capitalist roader” (Liu Shaoqi himself died

of illness in prison). The economy was wrecked.In 1978, when DengXiaoping (who alsoperformed hard rurallabor during theseyears) returned to pow-er, Chinese agriculturalproduction per capita was no higher than ithad been in 1949.

In such a situation, where revisionist rule was to be replaced by“people’s power,”things got out of hand with some currents who took Mao’s slogan“It is right to rebel” abit too far, and beganto question the wholenature of CCP rule since 1949. In these cases, as

in the “Shanghai Commune” of early 1967, thePeople’s Liberation Army (PLA) had to step inagainst an independent formation that includedradicalized workers. The PLA was in fact one ofthe main “winners” of the Cultural Revolution,for its role in stamping out currents that became athird force against both the “capitalist roaders”and the Maoists.(During all this, Kang Sheng, the hatchet man of Yan’an, returned to power and helped vilify, oust

and sometimes execute Mao’s factional oppo-nents, as he had done the first time around.)

Perhaps the most interesting case of things“going too far,” along with the brief ShanghaiCommune, before the army marched in, was theShengwulian current in Mao’s own Hunan prov-ince. There, workers and students who had gonethrough the whole process produced a series of

documents that became famous throughout Chi-na, analyzing the country as being under the con-trol of a “new bureaucratic ruling class.” While theShengwulian militants disguised their viewpoint with bows to the “thought of Mao tse-tung” and“Marxism-Leninism,” their texts were readthroughout China, and at the top levels of theparty itself, where they were clearly recognized for what they were: a fundamental challenge to bothfactions in power. They were mercilessly

crushed.10 Further interestingcritiques to emergefrom the years of theCultural Revolution were those written by Yu Luoke, at the timean apprentice workerand, later, the manifes-to of Wei Jingsheng, a28-year-old electricianat the Beijing Zoo onthe “Democracy Wall”in Beijing in 1978. Yu’stext was, likeShengwulian’s, dif-fused and read all overChina. It was a critiqueof the Cultural Revolu-tion’s “bloodline”

definition of “class” by family background and

political reliability, rather than by one’s relation-ship to the means of production. Yu was executedfor his troubles in 1970. The Democracy Wall, which was supposed to accompany Deng Xiao-ping’s return to power, also got out of hand and was suppressed in 1979.

Mao’s faction re-emerged triumphant by 1969. This included his wife, Jiang Qing, and three otherco-factioneers who would be arrested and de-posed as the “Gang of Four”11 shortly after

Mao’s death in 1976.12 This victory, it is oftenoverlooked, coincided with the beginning of


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Mao’s quiet outreach to the UnitedStates as a counterweight to the SovietUnion. There was active but localcombat between Chinese and Sovietforces along their mutual border in1969 and, as a result, Mao banned all

transit of Soviet material support toNorth Vietnam and the Viet Cong, aban which remained in effect until theend of the Vietnam War in 1975. Maoreceived US President Nixon in Bei-jing in early 1972, while the UnitedStates was raining bombs on North Vietnam.

This turn was hardly the first in-stance of a conservative foreign policy

at the expense of movements andcountries outside China. Already in1965, the Chinese regime, based on itsprestige as the center of “Marxist-Leninist” oppo-sition to Soviet “revisionism” after the Sino-Sovietsplit, had encouraged the powerful IndonesianCommunist Party (PKI) into a close alliance withIndonesia’s populist-nationalist leader, Sukarno. It was an exact repeat of the CCP’s alliance withChiang kai-shek in 1927, and it ended the same way, in a bloodbath in which 600,000 PKI mem-bers and sympathizers were killed in fall 1965 in amilitary coup, planned with the help of US advis-ers and academics.

Beijing said nothing about the massacre until1967 (when it complained that the Chinese embas-sy in Jakarta had been stoned during the events).In 1971, China also openly applauded the bloodysuppression of the Trotskyist student movementin Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). In the same year, itsupported (together with the United States and

against Soviet ally India), Pakistani dictator YayaKhan, who oversaw massive repression in Bangla-desh when that country (previously part of Paki-stan) declared independence.

In 1971, another bizarre turn in domestic policyalso took place, echoing Mao’s fascination withancient dynastic court intrigue. Up to that point,Lin Biao had been openly designated as Mao’ssuccessor. The Maoist press abroad, as well as theFrench intelligentsia which at the time was decid-

edly pro-Maoist, trumpeted the same line. Sudden-ly Lin Biao disappeared from public view, and in

late 1971 it was learned that he, too, supposedlyMao’s closest confidant for years, had been a capi-talist roader and a deep-cover KMT agent allalong. According to the official story, Lin hadcommandeered a military plane and fled towardthe Soviet border; the plane had crashed in Mon-golia, killing him and all aboard.13 For months, western Maoists denounced this account, pub-lished in the world press, as a pure bourgeois fab-rication, including what Simon Leys characterizedas the “most important pro-Maoist daily newspa-per in the West,” the very high tone Le Monde(Paris), whose Beijing correspondent was a Maoistdevotee. Then, when the Chinese governmentitself confirmed the story, the Western Maoiststurned on a dime and howled with the wolvesagainst Lin Biao. Simon Leys remarked that thesefervent believers had transformed the old Chinese

proverb “Don’t beat a dog after it has fallen intothe water” into “Don’t beat a dog until it has fall-en into the water.”

This was merely the beginning of the bizarreturn of Maoist world strategy and Chinese foreignpolicy. The “main enemy” and “greater danger” was no longer the world imperialism centered inthe United States, but Soviet “social imperialism.” Thus, when US-backed Augusto Pinochet over-threw the Chilean government of Salvador Allende

in 1973, China immediately recognized Pinochetand hailed the coup. When South African troops


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invaded Angola in 1975 after Angolan independ-ence under the pro-Soviet MPLA, China backedSouth Africa. During the Portuguese Revolutionof 1974-75, the Maoist forces there reached out tothe far right. Maoist currents throughout westernEurope called for the strengthening of NATO

against the Soviet threat. China supported Philip-pine dictator Fernando Marcos in his attempt tocrush the Maoist guerrilla movements in thatcountry.

Maoism had had a certain serious impact onNew Left forces in the West in the late 1960s andearly 1970s. Unraveling the factional differencesamong these groups would take us too far afield,and most of them had faded away by the 1980s.But “Maoism,” as interpreted in different ways,

was important in Germany, Italy, France and theUnited States. Some groups, such as the ultra-Stalinist Progressive Labor Party in the UnitedStates, saw the writing on the wall as early as 1969and broke with China in that year. Most of thesegroups were characterized by Stalinist thuggeryagainst opponents, and occasionally among them-selves.14 Their influence was as diffuse as it waspernicious; ca. 1975, there were hundreds of“Marxist-Leninist” study groups around the Unit-ed States, and hundreds of cadre had entered thefactories to organize the working class. By the mid-1970s, three main Maoist groups had emerged asdominant in the US left: the Revolutionary Union(RU) under Bob Avakian (later renamed theRCP), the October League (OL) under MikeKlonsky, and the Communist Labor Party (CLP). To really understand some of the differencesbetween them, one needed to know their relation-ship to the old “revisionist” Communist PartyUSA. The more moderate groups, such as the

October League, hearkened back to Earl Browd-er’s leadership during the Popular Front years.

More hard-line groups, such as the CLP, lookedto the more openly Stalinist William Z. Foster. These and other smaller groups fought ideologicalbattles over the proper attitude to take towardEnver Hoxha’s Albania, which for some (afterChina’s pro-US turn) remained, for them, the soletruly “Marxist-Leninist” country in the world.One small group trumpeted the “Three 3’s: Third

International/Third Period/Third World.”In Germany, New Left Maoism was on the as-

cendant after 1968, a process which it gingerlytermed the “positive overcoming of the anti-authoritarian movement” of that year. A majorcurrent was the KPD (Kommunistische ParteiDeutschlands), which fought against the muchlarger DKP (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei,the pro-Soviet party, which itself still barely ac-counted for 1 percent of the vote in Germanelections). Out of the KPD came a multitude ofsmaller “K -Gruppen,” with poetic names such asKPD-ML Rote Heimat (Red Homeland, withdistinct populist overtones of “soil”).

Only the DKP had any influence in the workingclass, with its infiltration of the trade unions; it was content to sit back after 1972 when the SocialDemocratic government of Willy Brandt issued its

“radical decree” and came down hard on the K -Gruppen, much as the Italian Communist Party(PCI), with 25 percent of the vote in the 1976elections, not only sat back while the Italian gov-ernment criminalized the entire far left as“terrorists”; it actively helped the government inthe suppression of the far left after the Red Bri-gades kidnapped and executed the right-wingpolitician Aldo Moro in spring 1978, as he was onhis way to sign the “historical compromise” which

would have allowed the PCI to join the ChristianDemocrats in a grand coalition.


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In France, Maoism never had the clout of themuch larger main Trotskyist parties (LutteOuvriere, the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaireand the Organisation Communiste International-iste, all of which are still around today, in the latter

two cases under different names). Most of theMaoist “Marxist-Leninist” groups had been dis-credited by their manipulative role during the May -June 1968 general strike, such as one whichmarched to the barricades on the night of themost serious street fighting (pitting thousands ofpeople against thousands of cops), announced thatthe whole thing was a government provocation,and urged everyone to go home, as they them-selves proceeded to do.

But in the spring of 1970, one small ultra-

Stalinist and ultra-militant Maoist group, theGauche Proletarienne (Proletarian Left), momen-tarily recruited Jean-Paul Sartre to its defense when the government banned it, following somespectacular militant interventions around thecountry. Sartre, who had over the previous 20years been successively pro-Soviet, pro-Cuba andthen pro-China, saved the GP from extinction,but it collapsed of its own ideological frenzyshortly thereafter. (It notably produced two partic-

ularly cretinous neo-liberal ideologues after 1977,Bernard-Henry Levi and Andre Glucksmann, as well as Serge July, editor-in-chief of the now veryrespectable daily Liberation, which began as thenewspaper of the GP.) Former French Maoiststurned up in the strangest places, such as RolandCastro, a fire-eating Maoist in 1968, who becamean intimate of Socialist President Francois Mitter-and, and was appointed to a leading technocraticposition.

Maoism in Britain again had next to no influ-ence, whereas both the Trotskyist Socialist LaborLeague (SLL) and the IS (later SWP), at their1970s peaks, had thousands of members and aserious presence in the working class.

In Japan, finally, the most advanced capitalistcountry in Asia, Maoism (as in Britain and inFrance), had no chance against the large, sophisti-cated New Left groups in the militant Zengaku-ren, which not only had no time for Maoism butnot even for Trotskyism, and which characterized

both the Soviet Union and China as “state capital-ist.” (Only the small underground, pro-North

Korean “Red Army” could in any way have beencharacterized as Maoist.)

In 1976, as mentioned earlier, the Maoist Gangof Four, who up to Mao’s death had been at thepinnacle of state power, were arrested, jailed and

never heard from again, as the “revisionists” head-ed by Deng Xiaoping returned to power and pre-pared to launch China on the road to “marketsocialism,” or “socialism with Chinese characteris-tics,” beginning in 1978.

This bizarre ideological period finally ended in1978-79, when China, now firmly an ally of theUnited States, attacked Vietnam and was rudelypushed back by the Vietnamese army under Gen-eral Giap (of Dien Bien Phu fame). Vietnam, stillallied with the Soviet Union, had occupied Cam-

bodia to oust the pro-Maoist Khmer Rouge, whohad taken over the country in 1975 and who wenton to kill upward of one million people. In re-sponse to China’s attack on Vietnam, the SovietUnion threatened to attack China. For any remain-ing Western Maoists at this point, the consterna-tion was palpable.

As elsewhere in different forms, the Maoists inthe United States did not go quietly into that darknight. Many of those who went into industry or

otherwise colonized working-class communitiesrose to positions of influence in the trade unionbureaucracy, such as Bill Fletcher of the FreedomRoad group, who was briefly a top aide to JohnSweeney when the latter took over the AFL-CIOin 1995. Mike Klonsky of the October Leaguetraveled to China in 1976 to be anointed as theofficial liaison to the Chinese regime after the fallof the Gang of Four, but that did not prevent theOL from fading away. The RCP sent colonizers to

West Virginia mining towns, where they wereinvolved in some wildcat strikes (some of thosestrikes, however, were against teaching Darwin inthe schools).

The RCP also supported ROAR, the racist anti-busing coalition, during the crisis in Boston in1975. Bob Avakian, in 1978, with four other RCPmembers, rushed the podium when Deng Xiao-ping appeared at a press conference in Washing-ton with Jimmy Carter to consummate the US-China alliance; they were charged with multiple

felonies and Avakian remains in exile in Paris tothis day. In 1984 and 1988,15 Maoists of different


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stripes were deeply involved in Jesse Jackson’s runfor the presidency, giving rise in 1984 after Jack-son lost out to the “Marxist-Leninists for Mon-dale” phenomenon.Members of the Communist Workers Party

(CWP) suffered a worse fate, when in 1979 mem-bers of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina(where they had organized in several textile towns)fired on their rally, killing five of them. But duringOccupy Oakland in the fall of 2011, it emergedthat no less than Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, as well as some of her key advisors, and high-levelmembers of the Alameda County Labor Council, were former members of the selfsame CWP.More recently, former members of the RCP whohad their fill of Avakian’s cult of personalityformed the Kasama network, which now has amuch larger, if more diffuse influence, at least onthe internet.

On a world scale, Maoists recently joined a coa-lition government in Nepal, and various groups,some reaching back to the 1960s or even earlier,continue to be active in the Philippines. The Indi-an Naxalites, who were stone Maoists in the 1970sbefore they were crushed by Indira Gandhi, havemade something of a comeback in poor rural

areas. The Shining Path group in Peru, which wassimilarly crushed by Fujimori, has made a steadycomeback there, openly referring to such groupsas the Cambodian Khmer Rouge as a model.

To conclude, it is important to consider the post-1978 fate of Maoism in China itself.For the regime which, since 1978, has overseennearly 35 years of virtually uninterrupted and un-precedented economic growth, averaging close to10 percent per year over decades, with the meth-

ods of “market socialism,” Mao Zedong remainsan indispensable icon of the ruling ideology. Inofficialese, Mao was “70 percent right and 30percent wrong.” The “wrong” part usually meansthe Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolu-tion, although serious discussion and research onthose events remains largely if not wholly taboo. As a result, a rose-tinted nostalgic view of Maoismand the Cultural Revolution has become de rigeurin the so-called Chinese New Left.16 There haveeven been echoes of Maoism in the recent fall oftop-level bureaucrat Bo Xilai, former strongmanof Chongqing with a decidedly populist style

which led some of his opponents to warn of thedangers of a “new Cultural Revolution.” Giventhe impossibility, in China, of frank public discus-sion of the entirety of Mao’s years in power (andbefore), and the small fragments of information

available to the young generations about thoseyears, it is hardly surprising that currents opposingthe appalling spread of social inequality and inse-curity since 1978 would turn back to that mythicalpast. This hardly makes such a turn less reaction-ary and dangerous.

Everything that happened after 1978 had itsorigins in the nature of the regime before 1978. There was no “counter-revolution,” still less atransformation of the previously existing socialrelations of production.

Once again, Maoism reveals its highly idealistand voluntarist conception of politics by a focuson the ideology of top leaders, as it previously did with Khruschev’s 1956 speech and thaw. Chinafrom 1949 to 1978 was preparing the China of1978 to the present. Even those pointing to the“shattering of the iron rice bowl,” the No. 1 ideo-logical underpinning of the old regime, ignore thepractice of significant casualized labor in the in-dustrial centers in the 1950s and 1960s. Until a

true “new left” in China seriously rethinks theplace of Maoism in the larger context of the histo-ry of the Marxist movement, and particularly itsorigins in Stalinism and not in the true, defeated world proletarian moment of 1917-1921, it isdoomed to reproduce, in China as in differentparts of the developing world, either grotesquecopies of Maoism’s periodic ultra-Stalinism (as inPeru) or to be the force that prepares the comingof “market socialism” by destroying the pre-

capitalist forms of agriculture and engaging inforced, autarchic industrialization until Western,or Japanese and Korean, or (why not?) Chinesecapital17 arrives to allow the full emergence ofcapitalism.Originally posted: October 15, 2012 at Insurgent

Notes1. The term “Stalinism” is used here throughoutto describe a new form of class rule by a bureau-cratic elite that, in different times and differentsituations, fought against pre-capitalist social for-


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mations (as in China) or against Western capital-ism. Some, myself included, see Stalinism as “statecapitalism”; a smaller number, influenced by thetheory of Max Schactman, see it as “bureaucraticcollectivism.” Orthodox Trotskyists call Stalinistregimes “deformed workers’ states”; the Bor-digists simply call it “capitalism.” Marxist-Leninists see such regimes as... socialism. This is ahuge debate which has taken place ever since the1920s but one could do worse than read WalterDaum’s The Life and Death of Stalinism, which, while defending a variant of the Trotskyist view,argues that the SovietUnion and all its“offspring” were statecapitalist. Outside

those countries wherea Stalinist regime hasstate power, I use theterm “Stalinist” todescribe those forces which are fighting toestablish one, or apol-ogists for one or an-other version of “realexisting socialism.”

2. All this is recountedin detail in HaroldIsaac’s book The Tragedy of the Chi-nese Revolution, firstpublished in 1934 andrepublished manytimes since. Readersshould be cautioned that Isaacs, a Trotskyist whenhe wrote the book, later became a “State Depart-ment socialist” and toned down the book witheach reprint, but later editions still tell the essen-tial story.3. These three factions arose after Lenin’s death in1924: the Trotskyist left advocating export of therevolution and an intense industrialization policybased on strong extraction of a surplus from thepeasantry; Bukharin argued for “socialism at asnail’s pace” with a much laxer attitude towardpetty producer capitalism by the peasants, andStalin “wavering” in between. On this, see the

review of the book of John Marot in the currentissue of IN.

4. To put it in a nutshell: the historical trajectoryof peasants under pre-capitalist conditions hasshown itself in most cases to be toward privatesmall-plot cultivation. In such conditions, as inRussia, they can be the allies of a proletarian revo-lution, in which the “democratic tasks” of socialistrevolution by the workers combine with those ofthe bourgeois revolution (land to the peasants). There is a bourgeois mode of production(capitalism), there is a transition to the communistmode of production in which the working class isthe ruling class (socialism); there is no “peasant

mode of production,” whichlimits the historical role ofpeasants to being allies of onedominant class or another.

5. See for example YgaelGluckstein’s early bookMao’s China (1955), particu-larly the chapter entitled “TheRegimentation of the Work-ing Class.” Gluckstein (wholater became better knownunder his pseudonym TonyCliff, leader of the BritishInternational Socialists and

then renamed the Socialist Workers’ Party) was the firstperson to systematically ana-lyze China as a form of statecapitalism.6. Some estimates run as highas 35 million. Past a certainpoint, the exact figures are

not so important as the unmitigated disastercaused by the policy.7. Apparently neither Mao nor any other memberof the CCP had read Marx at the time of itsfounding in 1921. They emerged out of the manyideological influences current in East Asia before World War I: socialism (vaguely understood),anarchism, Tolstoyan pacificism, and HenryGeorgism, among others. “Voluntarism” as theterm is used here refers to such episodes as theGreat Leap Forward, or the (above-mentioned)characterization of the Soviet bloc as “capitalist”based on Khruschev’s speech, or the (more ideal-

ist) definition of class in the Cultural Revolutionnot by an individual’s relation to the means of


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production but by their family background or“revisionist” ideas. For background on the volun-tarist ideologies current at the time of the found-ing of the CCP, cf. Maurice Meisner, Li ta-chaoand the Origins of Chinese Marxism; on Mao’s

voluntarism inherited from his early reading ofKant, cf. Frederic Wakeman, History and will:Philosophical Perspectives of Mao Tse-tung’s Thought8. The most important analysis of the CulturalRevolution in these terms is Simon Leys’s Chair-man Mao’s New Clothes, published in French in1969 and translated into English a few years later.Leys also wrote brilliant books on the culturaldesert created by Maoism in power, both beforeand after the Cultural Revolution: Chinese Shad-ows, The Burning Forest, and Broken Images. His work is required reading for anyone nostalgic forthe Cultural Revolution today.9. Some flavor of these events is described by theliberal academic Song Yongyi. His book on themassacres of the Cultural Revolution is unfortu-nately only in French and in Chinese. He alsoedited an Encyclopedia of the Cultural Revolution which is dry and academic.10. For Shengwulian’s most important statement

(1968) see their text “Whither China?”11. The Gang of Four came to be seen as theleaders of the Cultural Revolution towards its end. The original central organ that was directingthings both openly and behind the scenes wascomprised of 10 people. Among these were KangSheng, Chen Boda, Jiang Qing, Yao Wenyuan, Wang Li and others.12. Once again, the books of Simon Leys, citedabove, are all beautiful portraits of the ideological

and cultural climate in China up to 1976. Onecurious book, to be read with caution but usefulnonetheless, is by Dr. Li Zhisui, The Private Lifeof Chairman Mao (1994). Li was Mao’s personalphysician from 1956 to 1976 and lived most ofthose years in the elite Beijing compound withother top party personnel, and traveled with Mao wherever he went. The English translation of thebook was greeted with media-driven sensationalistfocus on accounts of Mao’s voracious sexualappetite for beautiful young women, which actual-

ly makes up a minor theme. Its real interest is theportrait of the comings and goings of the top

CCP leaderships during the last 20 years of Mao’slife, their rises and their downfalls. It also re-counts Mao’s deep reading in Chinese dynastichistory, the so-called “24 dynastic histories” cov-ering the years 221 BC-1644 AD. Mao’s fascina-

tion was above all with court intrigue. Accordingto Li, he had the greatest admiration for some ofthe “most ruthless and cruel” emperors, such asQin Shihuangdi (221-206 BC), who founded theshort-lived Qin dynasty. Qin ordered the infa-mous “Burning of the Books” and executed manyConfucian scholars (p. 122). Another favorite wasthe Emperor Sui Yangdi (604-618), who orderedthe building of the Grand Canal by massive con-scripted labor, during which thousands died.13. But another account surfaced, of which anEnglish translation was published in 1983: YaoMing-Le, The Conspiracy and Death of Lin Biao.It purports to be a pseudonymous account writtenby a high-ranking CCP member who was assignedto develop the cover story of Lin’s flight anddeath. According to Yao, a struggle to the deathbetween Mao and Lin had been underway, andLin was plotting a coup to overthrow and killMao. The plot was discovered, and Lin Biao wasarrested and executed. No less a skeptic of

sources coming out of China than Simon Leys, inhis book The Burning Forest, argues that Yao’saccount agrees with other known facts14. For a full account, see Max Elbaum’s bookRevolution in the Air, which purports to see thesegroups as the “best and the brightest” to emergefrom the American 60s. For a short course, seemy polemical review of Elbaum, “Didn’t See TheSame Movie.”15. This foray into Democratic Party politics is

enthusiastically recounted in Max Elbaum’s bookcited above.16. See the article of Lance Carter on the ChineseNew Left in Insurgent Notes No. 1.17. Chinese investment in Africa in recent years,aimed first of all at the procurement of raw mate-rials, has taken on serious dimensions; alreadysome African leaders are warning of a “new colo-nialism.” On the level of high comedy, Westernleaders have the effrontery to solemnly warn Chi-na “not to exploit Africa’s natural resources.”


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The documents by Grover Furr I have beenreading on Soviet history form another set ofexamples. Grover is a long time communist,

English professor and amateur historian. Hehas undertaken a project to prove that theoriginal Soviet explanations of the purges andpurge trials are being factually substantiated byreal evidence (including the materials in theSoviet archives).Having a particular interest in Soviet historyand being urged by a good friend to engageGrover, I have read his stuff. I have to say it isone of the most astonishing projects of pseu-

do-research I have seen (outside of creationistanti-evolution efforts). I am thinking in partic-ular of one major document by Grover,“Evidence of Leon Trotsky’s Collaboration

with Germany and Japan.” It appeared in Cul-tural Logic for 2009, and it appears onGrover’s site with the simple claim: “On the evidence there’s no doubt that Trot-sky conspired with the Germans and Japanese

as alleged during the second and third Moscow Trials of January 1937 and March 1938.”

What follows (when you print and read hispiece) is virtually every kind of logical fallacy

we have listed above. There is in fact, no evi-dence that Trotsky “conspired with the Ger-mans and Japanese as alleged.” And what isalleged is after all both major and very specific:

That Trotsky was a paid agent of the fascists,that he conspired to overthrow socialism, killthe communist leaders and help carve up theSoviet Union between the various Axis pow-ers!

I want to say, in passing, that Grover doesoccasionally debunk the most extreme anddeceitful anticommunist claims. There are lotsof ridiculous charges (example: that Stalin de-liberately unleashed famine in the Ukraine as aform of genocide against Ukrainian people).

The following article is from Mike Ely on

t h e K a s a m a b l o g ( h t t p : / /kasamaproject.org/2010/10/04/three-quick -examples-of-leftist-pseudo-science/). It is

written from a Maoist standpoint as is evi-dent in the concluding remarks.However it does the job of refuting themethodology employed by Furr and otherconspiracy theorists very well. The method-ology of Trotskyism vs. Maoism/Marxism/Leninism (in all its varieties) is another taskfor a later date. Of central importance hereis the Maoist theory of the qualitative differ-ence between the nationalist and compradorbourgeoisie in the semi-colonial world.

Unregenerate Stalinist Grover Furr of theEnglish Department, Montclair State Uni- versity. His works include The Sixty-OneUntruths of Nikita Khrushchev . In inter-

view in the Georgian Times on 2010.11.09 heclaims, “The (post WWII) Deportation ofNationalities was Excusable”.

http://chss.montclair.edu/English/furr/research/litrossiainterv0608_eng.htmlhttp://chss.montclair.edu/English/furr/research/litrossiainterv0608_eng.htmlhttp://chss.montclair.edu/English/furr/research/litrossiainterv0608_eng.htmlhttp://chss.montclair.edu/English/furr/research/litrossiainterv0608_eng.htmlhttp://chss.montclair.edu/English/furr/research/litrossiainterv0608_eng.html


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And Grover does help refute them in some ofhis documents. But his other delusional workdiscredits such refutations.In his specific and most energetic claims (i.e.that the official Soviet allegations in the showtrials were credible and proven) Grover has tofall back on misdirection. The only evidence ofthose old school purge-trial charges remainsthe “evidence” presented in those trials: theconfessions of men in prison, men who facingdeath penalties, fearfor their families andpossible torture. Ifone has a scepticalattitude toward con-

fessions under suchconditions, then thereis no other evidenceof the core allegations.Grover’s writings doeverything we’ve beendiscussing:For example theyprove (in great detail)

that Trotsky and otherformed a politicalgroup with a specificprogram, and allianc-es, and sought tostruggle for their line(and for the replace-ment of the partycurrents that werethen in power). Inother words, he proves that there was a politi-cal opposition (or rather several) within theCPSU(B) and its various levels.But, that is obvious to everyone and does notneed proving. And by proving the existence ofa political opposition you have not proven thatLeon Trotsky worked for the Nazis. It is (as the“fallacies” document discusses) an example ofred herring, non sequitor, slippery slope exag-

geration. That method appears over and over in much of

Grover’s work — he documents and proves allkinds of things with baroque flourishes of de-tail, but just not what he claims to have proven.

While Grover claims to have evidence, a lot ofhis case revolves around a “special pleading”about why there actually is no real evidence. Heargues that the conspirators would not have

written anything down, and evidence wouldhave been carefully destroyed, and so on.But in fact, it is not possible for a major con-

spiracy and spy networkriddled the Soviet Unionin service to the Axisgovernment withoutsome evidence (if only

in Nazi records) — con-ferences, reports, direc-tives, funding records…as the news of this con-spiracy went up anddown the Nazi chain ofcommand.

The fact that six dec-ades of historical re-

search (including intoGerman, Japanese andSoviet government ar-chives) has not pro-duced any evidence of a

vast complex espionageoperation (of the kindthe Soviets alleged)shows that there was nosuch operation.

The Trotskyist opposition was a political linestruggle within the ruling Soviet party. Theirpolitical program may well have been disastrous(and I believe it was), but the Stalin-era asser-tion that oppositionists were secret Nazis was

wrong (politically, theoretically and factually) — even if Stalin himself may have believed itand then demanded that subordinates docu-ment it.

Grover also makes a classic “excluded middle”argument: by saying that anyone opposing his

While Grover claims to have evidence, alot of his case revolves around a “special

pleading” about why there actually is noreal evidence. He argues that the con-

spirators would not have written anythingdown, and evidence would have beencarefully destroyed, and so on. But infact, it is not possible for a major conspir-acy and spy network riddled the SovietUnion in service to the Axis government

without some evidence (if only in Nazirecords) — conferences, reports, direc-tives, funding records… as the news of

this conspiracy went up and down theNazi chain of command. The fact that sixdecades of historical research (includinginto German, Japanese and Soviet gov-ernment archives) has not produced anyevidence of a vast complex espionageoperation (of the kind the Soviets alleged)shows that there was no such operation.


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arguments is therefore clearly influenced by theanticommunist arguments — as if these histori-cal matters exist on a simple binary grid whereyou either agree with Vyshinsky (channelledthrough Grover Furr) or take your side with

Robert Conquest. And so in Grover’s work,other analyses of these events (by scholarsknown for not being anticommunist) don’tmake much of an appearance.Grover also lavishly argues using “weasel

words,” “proof by verbosity” (seemingly end-less verbosity) and “appeal to authority” (bothhis own and Stalin’s). I’m particularly struck by the argument (thathas appeared in various places) that we have toaccept Grover’s scholarly authority because hehas spent years on this mission, read in theSoviet archives personally, and because wedon’t ourselves speak Russian in order to dis-sect the primary material. This is all logicallyfalse.First, Grover is hardly the only person who hadplumbed those archives — and there are major

works that provide many key documents in

English so that we can all explore key and re- vealing sections of the primary material. I’mthinking, in particular, of J. Arch Getty’s TheRoad to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destructionof the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939.Further, those communists who defended thepurges and show trials “down the line” were(for sixty years) totally disinterested in data andevidence — and were rather militant about

proclaiming their beliefs without evidence. They didn’t care about evidence. And forsomeone to claim now (suddenly) that none ofus (not one) has any right to an opinion here

without learning Russian (!) and spending yearsin Moscow archives…because we (supposedly)just don’t know the evidence…

And at the same time, to claim that the massiveevidence against their own theories must bepermanently suspect (because it comes fromKGB controlled archives). Well, the switcher-oos and double-think are a bit much to bear.

It is not as if the Russian archives are a newthing — they have been open for literally dec-ades. Or as if no honest man (other thanGrover Furr) has gone there. If there was reallyany new real evidence establishing the existence

of a big world-circling Nazi-Trotsky network ofspies and assassins — don’t you think it wouldhave leaked into public view?It has even been mentioned in discussion thatGrover Furr has gotten publicity for his views

within the modern Russian press where inter- views with him are published. So? That is anexample of the logical fallacy called “the band-

wagon effect” — and I have to add that gettinga theory promoted in the Russian media ishardly evidence of credibility. Russian politics isnotorious for its love of crackpot and paranoidtheories of many kinds (especially if they, unlikeGrover’s theories, have an anti-Semitic under-belly).It would take a month to dissect Grover’s arti-cle on the Trotsky-Nazi connection, and unrav-el all the various levels of misdirection. But thefact remains that there is not embedded in it

any piece of evidence (at all!) that documentshis claims.I have asked him (several times) to simply emailme a one or two sentence message that men-tions the single fact that he believes best docu-ments this alleged conspiracy. And I’m still

waiting. We don’t actually need seventy pagesof hemming and hawing — a one paragraphdescription of one real documented fact would

suffice to put Grover’s theory on a differentplane (a report in a Nazi file, a pay stub, amemoir from one of the architects of the con-spiracy, one eye witness account that isn’t aprisonhouse confession… one simple real pieceof evidence of any kind of the actual allegationsthat Grover says are confirmed.)Here too the issue really is line and avoidanceof line:Stalin claimed that antagonist classes had disap-peared in the 1930s Soviet Union and so theonly material basis for widespread opposition


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The Gestapo – NKVD conferences were a seriesof meetings organized in late 1939 and early1940[1][2] whose purpose was to enable theGerman and Soviet security forces (the Gesta-po and NKVD respectively) to share infor-

mation regarding their operations in Poland. Inspite of their differences on other issues, bothHeinrich Himmler and Lavrentiy Beria hadcommon purposes as far as the fate of Poland

was concerned,[3] and the conferences dis-cussed coordinating plans for occupation of thePolish nation and in fighting the Polish re-sistance movement,[4][5] which was an irritantto both Nazi and Soviet occupiers of Poland.

Out of four conferences,[4] the third took placein the famous Tatra Mountains spa of Za-kopane[1] in south Poland, and is the mostremembered (the Zakopane Conference). Fromthe Soviet side, several officers of the NKVDparticipated in these meetings, the Germansbringing a group of experts from the Gestapo.

After the signing of the Molotov – RibbentropPact on 23 August 1939, Germany invadedPoland on 1 September[6][7] and the Soviet

Union invaded Poland on 17 September[6][8]resulting in the occupation of Poland by the

Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

First ConferenceLittle is known about this meeting. It reportedlytook place on 27 September 1939 in Brześć nad

Bugiem, while some units of the Polish Army were still fighting (see: Invasion of Poland).Both sides expected that Polish resistance

would start soon, and they discussed ways ofdealing with the possible activities of such re-sistance.[2]

Second Conference This meeting took place some time at the endof November 1939, probably in Przemyśl[2] —

a city which — between September 1939 and June 1941 — was divided into German and Sovi-et parts. Apart from talks of fighting Polishresistance, the Soviets and the Germans dis-cussed ways of exchanging Polish POWs. Also,first discussions about the occupation of Po-land were started. Some historians claim thismeeting took place in Lwów.[1][3] It is alsoclaimed a meeting was held in December.[5][9]

Secret protocol of German – Soviet Boundaryand Friendship Treaty “Both parties will toler-

Gestapo–NKVD Conferences

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, (Redirected from Gestapo-NKVD Conferences) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo%E2%80%93NKVD_Conferences,

was the actions of old class elements who had wormed their way into power in close alliance with paid agents of foreign enemies. It is a par-ticular theory about the political oppositions

within the Communist Party.Mao by contrast (based on an assessment of

both Stalin’s theories and Soviet history) con-cluded that there was a material basis withinsocialism and within the Communist Party for“capitalist roaders” to emerge and contend forpower. It is an opposing theory.By announcing that the official Soviet explana-tion for their purges were factually correct,

Grover is making a statement on a crucial (dareI say world historic) question of “where do theforces of capitalist restoration come from?”

And he does so in the guise of an objectivescholarly exploration of historical evidence — and so does not engage his own views of this

theoretical question, and does not seriouslyengage the Maoist counter-position.It is a two-line struggle over a major question

waged (among communists) using a method ofbogus factual “proof” based on bogus claims ofobscure evidence.


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ate in their territories no Polish agitation whichaffects the territories of the other party. They

will suppress in their territories all beginningsof such agitation and inform each other con-cerning suitable measures for this purpose.”

Third Conference This one is the best known, and took place inZakopane,[10] starting on 20 February 1940[5]in the villa “Pan Tadeusz”, located at the Drogado Białego street close to the entry to theBiałego Valley. The German side was repre-sented by Adolf Eichmann and an official bythe name of Zimmermann, who later becamechief of the Radom District of the General

Government. The Soviet delegation was headedby Grigoriy Litvinov and — among others — Rita Zimmerman (director of a gold mine inKolyma) and a man named Eichmans, creatorof an efficient way of killing in the back of thehead.[2]

According to several sources, one of the resultsof this conference was the German Ausseror-dentliche Befriedungsaktion (see: German AB

Action operation in Poland),[11] elimination ofKrakow intelligentsia Sonderaktion Krakau andthe Soviet Katyn massacre[5][12] In his 1991book Stalin: Breaker of Nations, British histori-an Robert Conquest stated: “Terminal horrorsuffered by so many millions of innocent Jew-ish, Slavic, and other European peoples as aresult of this meeting of evil minds is an indeli-ble stain on the history and integrity of Westerncivilization, with all of its humanitarian preten-

sions”. Also, Professor George Watson fromCambridge University concluded in his“Rehearsal for the Holocaust?” commentary(June 1981) that the fate of the interned Polishofficers may have been decided at this confer-ence.[13][14] This is however disputed by otherhistorians, who point out that there is no docu-mentary evidence confirming any cooperationon that issue, that the existing Soviet documen-

tation actually makes such a cooperation im-probable and that it is reasonable to say that

Germany did not know about the Katyn massa-cre until the corpses were found.[15]

Fourth Conference The fourth and last meeting took place inMarch 1940 in Krakow[16] (according to some

historians, it was part of the Zakopane Confer-ence). This event was described by General

Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, commander of Armia Krajowa in his book “Armia Podziem-na” (“The Secret Army”). In it, he describeshow a special delegation of NKVD came toKrakow, which was going to discuss with Ge-stapo how to act against the Polish resistance.

The talks lasted for several weeks.[17][18]

Bor-Komorowski′s description is disputed byRussian historian Oleg Vishlyov, who, based onthe original Soviet documents, claims that theconference was not between NKVD and Ge-stapo, but between Soviet and German com-missions dealing with refugees in both occupiedterritories and the topic of discussion was‘refugee exchange’. According to that authorthe conference had nothing to do with repres-sions against Poles or with the Katyn massacre.[19] In fact, some historians point out that, inspite of other coordinated actions, there is noevidence of direct German-Soviet cooperationin the Katyn massacre itself.[20]

References“Soviet Deportations Of Polish Nationals - Photo Album I”. Electronicmuseum.ca. Retrieved 2012-05-05.“Voskresenie - Catholic Magazine”. Voskrese-nie.niedziela.pl. Retrieved 2012-05-05.Rees, Laurence (2008) World War Two BehindClosed Doors BBC Books ISBN 978-0-563-49335-8“Poland: Communist Era”. CommunistCrimes.org.Retrieved 2012-05-05.“NEIGHBOURS ON THE EVE OF THE HOLO-CAUST POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS IN SO- VIET-OCCUPIED EASTERN POLAND, 1939-

1941”. Electronicmuseum.ca. Retrieved 2012-05-05.Zaloga, S.J. (2003) Poland 1939 Osprey ISBN 1-

84176-408-6“1 September - This Day in History”. Thehisto-


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C S ?

rychannel.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-05-05.Davies, N. (1986) God’s Playground Volume IIOxford University Press ISBN 0-19-821944-XPage 437“de beste bron van informatie over polands holo-

caust. Deze website is te koop!”. poland-sholocaust.org. Retrieved 2012-05-05.“Warsaw Uprising Witnesses: Dr. Jan Moor- Jankowski”. Warsawuprising.com. Retrieved 2012-05-05.http://www.mp.gov.si/fileadmin/mp.gov.si/pageuploads/2005/PDF/publikacije/Crimes_committed_by_Totalitarian_Regimes.pdfConquest, Robert (1991). Stalin: Breaker of Na-tions Phoenix ISBN 1-84212-439-0 Page 229Louis Robert Coatney. The Katyn MassacreGeorge Watson. Rehearsal for the Holocaust?See e.g. Slawomir Kalbarczyk, “Zbrodnia Katyn-ska po 70 latach: krotki przeglad ustalen historio-grafii” (in Zbrodnia Katynska. W kregu prawdy iklamstwa, IPN, Warszawa, 2010, pp. 18-19); Witold Wasilewski, “Współpraca sowiecko-niemiecka a zbrodnia katyńska” in Pamięć iSprawiedliwość, 2009, nr.1.; О.В. Вишлёв,Накануне 22 июня 1941 года, М.: Наука, 2001,с.119-123; N. Lebedeva, A. Cienciala, W. Mater-

ski, Katyn: a crime without punishment, YaleUniversity Press, 2007, p. 143.Stenton, M. Radio London and Resistance inOccupied Europe Oxford,2000 ISBN 978-0-19-820843-3 page 277Bór-Komorowski, T. (1950). The Secret Army Victor Gollancz Page 46“Nazi-Soviet complicity in Molotov-RibbentropPact especially blatant in NKVD-Gestapo co-operation - EWR”. Eesti.ca. Retrieved 2012-05-

05.О.В. Вишлёв, Накануне 22 июня 1941 года,М.: Наука, 2001, с.119-123.See e.g. Slawomir Kalbarczyk, “Zbrodnia Katyn-ska po 70 latach: krotki przeglad ustalen historio-grafii” (in Zbrodnia Katynska. W kregu prawdy iklamstwa, IPN, Warszawa, 2010, pp. 18-19); Witold Wasilewski, “Współpraca sowiecko-niemiecka a zbrodnia katyńska” in Pamięć iSprawiedliwość, 2009, nr.1.; N. Lebedeva, A.Cienciala, W. Materski, Katyn: a crime without

punishment, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 143.

Secret protocol of Ger-man – Soviet Boundaryand Friendship Treaty:

“Both parties will tolerate in theirterritories no Polish agitation which affects the territories of the

other party. They will suppress intheir territories all beginnings ofsuch agitation and inform eachother concerning suitablemeasures for this purpose.” (Maybe just a tad counter-revolutionary, Stalinist Com-rades?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary_and_Friendship_Treatyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary_and_Friendship_Treatyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary_and_Friendship_Treatyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary_and_Friendship_Treatyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary_and_Friendship_Treatyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary_and_Friendship_Treatyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary_and_Friendship_Treatyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary_and_Friendship_Treaty

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In Defence of Trotskyisn No.15