The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification -- Chapter 9
stupidity of national-reformism. We can be victorious only as an integral section of the world revolution.
We must hold on until the world revolution, even if the latter is deferred for a number of years. In this
respect, the trend of our policy is of decisive importance. By means of a correct revolutionary course, we
shall intrench ourselves for a number of years, we shall intrench the Communist International, move
ahead along the socialist path and achieve our being taken in tow by the great historical tugboat of the
international revolution.
Our present party course is the main danger. It stifles the revolutionary power of resistance. What does
your course consist of? You put your stake on the strong peasant and not on the agricultural laborer and
the poor peasant. You steer toward the bureaucrat and the functionary and not the masses. You place far
too much faith in the apparatus. In the apparatus you have tremendous internal support for each other,
and mutual insurance for yourselves - that is why Ordjonikidze is unable to succeed even in reducing the
staffs. Independence from the masses creates the system of mutual concealment and shielding. And all
this is considered as the main prop of power. In the party, reliance is now placed on the secretary and not
on the rank and file member. You rely now on Purcell and not on the rank and file proletarian. You rely
not on the revolutionary miner but on Purcell who has betrayed the miners. In China, you steer a course
toward Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei and not toward the Shanghai proletarian, not the coolie
who drags cannon on his shoulder, and not the insurgent peasant.
You have placed on the order of the day the question of expelling us from the Central Committee.
Assuredly, each one of us will carry out his work regardless of his position, as a rank and file party
member. But this will not solve the question; you will have to draw further conclusions. Life itself will
compel you to make these conclusions. You had better pause instead and change your course.
NOTES:
48. The Central Control Commission is a body, formally distinct from the Central Committee, which
presides over the morals and the discipline of the party memhership. It is, in theory, sup posed to be
made up of the most authoritative and unimpeachable party members, so that their decisions shall not be
influenced by factional or other extraneous considerations. In Stalin's period, the C.C.C. was converted
into a mere factional instrument for the punishment and expulsion of any political opponent or critic
indicated by the bureaucracy. [BACK TO TEXT]
49. The incident at the railway station refers to the gathering of political and personal friends to bid
farewell to I. T. Smilga who was being deported from Moscow on the pretext of being sent to do party
work in the provinces -- an action in direct violation of the party rules, adopted as early as the Tenth
Congress on Lenin's motion, providing against the shifting of members for party work on the grounds of
their political views. Zinoviev's speech over the radio was on the occasion of the anniversary of the
central party organ, Pravda; he was charged with having spoken about inner-party affairs to an audience
containing non- party members-at a time when the public press was filled with column upon column of
the most violent and slanderous attacks upon the Oppositionists every single day. As for Trotsky's
"breach of discipline," he had been condemned by the Stalinist press more than a year before for having
failed to appeal his case to the international tribunal, namely, to the Communist Inter national, which is,
in theory, a superior body to any committee or assembly of the Russian party, which is only one of its
national sections. Trotsky and Vuyovich, as members of the Executive Committee of the Communist
International, did exercise their rights as members to appear before the Eighth Plenum of the E.C.C.I. in
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