Polemic on General Line of International ... - From Marx to Mao

had already taken over and proclaimed power earlier . . .I did not hand over power to the proletariat, as it hadalready won it earlier, thanks to its planned creation of aSocialist army.For this reason, Bela Kun pointed out that to say thebourgeoisie voluntarily handed political power over to theproletariat was a deceptive “legend”. 1The Hungarian Revolution of 1919 was defeated. Inexamining the chief lessons of its defeat, Lenin said that onefatal error committed by the young Hungarian CommunistParty was that it was not firm enough in exercising dictatorshipover the enemy but wavered at the critical moment.Moreover, the Hungarian Party failed to take correct measuresto meet the peasants’ demand for the solution of the landproblem and therefore divorced itself from the peasantry.Another important reason for the defeat of the revolution wasthe amalgamation of the Communist Party and the opportunistSocial Democratic Party.It is a sheer distortion of history when the leaders of theCPSU allege that the Hungarian Revolution of 1918-19 isa model of “peaceful transition”.Furthermore, they allege that the working class of Czechoslovakiawon “power by the peaceful road”. 2 This is anotherabsurd distortion of history.The people’s democratic power in Czechoslovakia was establishedin the course of the anti-fascist war; it was not takenfrom the bourgeoisie “peacefully”. During World War II,the Communist Party led the people in guerrilla warfare andarmed uprisings against the fascists, it destroyed the Germanfascist troops and their servile regime in Czechoslovakia withthe assistance of the Soviet Army and established a nationalfront coalition government. This government was in essence1Bela Kun, op. cit., p. 49.2L. I. Brezhnev, Speech at the 12th Congress of the Communist Partyof Czechoslovakia, Pravda, December 4, 1962.380