On May 8 (May 9 in the USSR’s timezones), 1945, after six years of a worldwide conflict—actually, that conflict may stretch back even further, depending on how you interpret the situation in the world at the time—Nazi Germany’s army finally surrendered to the Allied Powers, officially ending World War Two in Europe and signifying the masses’ victory over fascism. Tens of millions of lives were lost in this war, especially because the German imperialists committed multiple genocides and enslaved and exploited the people of their conquered areas for profit; the cause of the horrible war was capitalist-imperialism. The USSR lost the most lives, sacrificing 27 million people, more than half of whom were civilians, in their sacred war of self-defense; it also fought most of the Nazi bastards, for Hitler sent most of his troops there in Operation Barbarossa—the largest military operation in history. We must commemorate this proletarian victory, but we must remember the suffering that occurred before it; we must also see how capitalist-imperialists never stopped their fight to destroy socialism, and we need to recognize that fascism is a rising threat that must be crushed.
The People’s Fight Against Fascism
Before the war officially began, the USSR tried its best to avoid war while it supported anti-fascist struggles across Europe. It joined the League of Nations when it could, while fascist states withdrew from it. It established trade relations with the same imperialist powers that attempted to destroy in in the Russian Civil War. In Spain, it was the only power that actively supported the bourgeois-democratic Spanish republic against Francisco Franco’s fascist forces during the Spanish civil war; none of the other bourgeois democracies did this, and many financially supported Italy and Germany in backing Franco. With Czechoslovakia, it explicitly said it wanted to send the Red Army to resist the Nazis’ attempt at taking the “Sudetenland”, but capitalist Britain appeased the fascists and let them gobble up the country. Crucially, the USSR halted Nazi expansion in Poland by signing the non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany and by using that pact to defend east Poland; Britain and France “declared war” on the Nazis, but they barely did anything to support Poland. That is why the common narrative that “the Soviets and the Nazis worked together to start World War Two” is false. Every country at the time knew that the Soviets halted Nazi expansion in eastern Europe, and they knew that Hitler sought most of all to destroy the Bolshevik regime and impose a particularly brutal capitalist dictatorship that would murder the Jews and enslave the Slavs.
On June 22, 1941, the Nazi barbarians began their massive invasion of the USSR. Like with other parts of the war, anti-communists love to invent myths out of thin air regarding the Soviet Union and its response to the invasion. In fact, the Soviet resistance to the Nazi bastards was the fiercest of the whole war, and its socialist system was no small part in allowing for that. We can see this in Chapter Eight of The Stalin Era by Anna Louise Strong:
The view in Berlin, London and Washington was that Russian resistance would be smashed in a one-month blitz. After a fortnight, Washington cautiously admitted: “The Russians have put up the strongest resistance the Germans have yet met.” In six weeks, America and Britain began to re-appraise the conflict. Winston Churchill, now Prime Minister, broadcast praise of the Russians’ “magnificent devotion” and noted the efficiency of their military organization. Raymond Clapper cabled from London August 20 (World-Telegram): “Russia has opened up a new pattern for victory. Never before . . . has there been put up against Hitler the manpower sufficient and willing to do the job.” …
For more than twenty years the Soviet people had prepared for this onslaught, but it took a different form from what they most feared. They had dreaded a joint attack by all the earth’s capitalist nations; they had feared that a world line-up would form against the USSR. This might have happened if they had fought in Poland two years earlier, when Chamberlain was in power; it would almost surely have happened if the Finnish war had dragged on till an Anglo-French force arrived; it might have happened if Russia had attacked Hitler during his Balkan campaign, as a British diplomat told me they should have done— “before Hitler strengthens himself by victories.” …
The experts were especially surprised by the Red Army’s up-todate equipment. Great tank battles were reported; it was noted that the Russians had sturdy tanks which often smashed or overturned German tanks in head-on collision. “How does it happen,” a New York editor asked me, “that those Russian peasants, who couldn’t run a tractor if you gave them one, but left them rusting in the field, now appear with thousands of tanks efficiently handled?” I told him it was the Five-Year Plan. But the world was startled when Moscow admitted its losses after nine weeks of war as including 7,500 guns, 4,500 planes and 5,000 tanks. An army that could still fight after such losses must have had the biggest or second biggest supply in the world. …
The blitzkrieg, on which Hitler relied for quick victory, thus failed to bring Russian collapse. Hitler was forced to a longer war, which the German economy could ill endure. “For the first time, Hitler is fighting in a new dimension,” said a N. Y, Times editorial. The writer was speaking of geography but the “new dimension” was more than geography. For the first time, Hitler was fighting an entire people, organized for total defense. In Soviet tactics, the activities of the army and of the people were coordinated. “The front is not only where the cannon roars,” was the slogan. “It is in every workshop, in every farm.”
The tremendous manpower of Russia had been conceded by everyone. But few people had realized how the quality of this manpower had changed. Socialized medicine, the care given to mothers and babies in childbirth, physical education and sports among young people had improved the national health. Army statistics had shown steady increase in height, weight, chest measurements. The education and military knowledge of recruits had also increased year by year. Millions of trained women took part in the defense; the medical service of the army was full of them, as were communications, supply and engineers. Civilians had prepared themselves physically to cooperate with the army. Six million people had passed the tests of the GTO badge—“ready for labor and defense”—which demanded all-round fitness in walking, running, swimming, jumping, rowing, skiing. Many had taken free courses in parachute-jumping and gliding—even small children loved to jump from the “parachute-towers” in the parks of culture and rest.
The form of the collective farm fitted admirably the needs of defense. Every farm had its working brigades with their leaders; these could act as labor battalions for the army, even bringing their own cooks and cooking equipment. Every farm had its summer-time nursery, run by the older mothers under trained nurses; this organization could handle the children in groups and evacuate them to the interior, in the returning box-cars that had brought up troops. Every farm had its civil defense group which had learned sharp-shooting and had weapons; here was a guerrilla band already formed.
[Source]
It was thanks to the Soviet Union’s collectivization and mechanization of agriculture, its rapid industrialization (especially its development in heavy industry), and its planned economic development not subject to capitalist market laws that the country’s military technology was able to be built up to the level needed to resist the Nazi invasion. Just as importantly, proletarian dictatorship’s suppression of capitalist-roaders and wreckers was also needed to protect the USSR from internal weaknesses during the war. As Chairman Mao once said, “the outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weapon” [Source]. This clearly was the case in the USSR since the Red Army was rooted in the Soviet people; the entire population was involved in defense construction and production, and millions joined the Red Army and guerrilla units.
The Soviets kicked the Nazi imperialists out of their mother land after the Battle of Stalingrad and a series of repeated successes until 1944. From there, the Red Army went across eastern Europe in support of the ongoing guerrilla campaigns in the region; the US’s Lend Lease program sent most of its aid after the Battle of Stalingrad. The Soviets’ push liberated Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and eastern Germany by 1945 while the Americans and other Western Allies waged their campaign from the West. When the Soviets attacked Berlin and got close to victory, the coward Hitler shot himself, and eight days later, the Nazi army surrendered to the Allied Powers. Without the immense contributions of the USSR, Nazi Germany would have won with great ease. Therefore, we celebrate!
The victory of the Anti-Fascist War was a victory of socialism, the most advanced social system in history, a victory of the people in all countries who united to win freedom and liberation, and a victory for Marxism-Leninism. The history of the War gave fresh and conclusive proof that the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism are universally applicable and hold for all time and that a guiding line, policy, strategy or tactics based on these principles is invincible. …
The main contest in the Anti-Fascist War was between the Soviet Union, the only socialist state at the time, and fascist Germany, then the most powerful imperialist state. After occupying almost the whole of capitalist Europe, the German fascists mobilized immense resources and manpower and made war on the Soviet Union. It was a severe test for the young Soviet state. It was a decisive battle between the two systems, imperialism and socialism.
Instead of being crushed by Hitler’s war machine, the first socialist state, created by Lenin, achieved a great historic victory. Headed by Stalin, the CPSU held high the fighting banner of Leninism and led the Soviet people and the heroic Soviet army, reared in the glorious tradition of the October Revolution, in overcoming innumerable difficulties and in eventually defeating the Hitler gang which had mustered the military and economic strength of more than a dozen European countries. The Soviet people and army successfully defended their own country and opened the way for the East European peoples to liberate themselves from the enslavement of the Hitler brigands. The Soviet people proved themselves worthy of the name of a great people, and the Soviet army proved itself worthy of the name of a great army. Time will never dim their glorious exploits.
The heroic deeds of the Soviet people and army are indissolubly linked with the incomparable superiority of the Soviet socialist system and the great strength of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was the socialist system and the dictatorship of the proletariat that guaranteed victory for the Soviet people and army. Only this system and this dictatorship could have stood firm under the surprise attack of the most ferocious imperialist power and trained such an army and such a people who fought the fascist brigands resolutely until final victory. Only this system and this dictatorship could have accomplished the industrialization of the Soviet state and the collectivization of its agriculture in so short a period and thus built up sufficient economic and military strength to defeat the Hitler thugs. As Stalin put it, “Our victory signifies, first of all, that our Soviet social system was victorious, that the Soviet social system successfully passed the test of fire in the war and proved that it is fully viable.” He also said, “The war proved that the Soviet social system is a genuine people’s system, which grew up from the ranks of the people and enjoys their powerful support. . . .” …
At that time two diametrically opposed policies towards fascist aggression held the world stage. For a long period the British, French and U.S. imperialists and their partners followed a policy of appeasement towards German, Italian and Japanese fascism, indulging the evil-doers and conniving at their crimes. They tacitly consented to the aggression of Japanese imperialism against China. They allowed Mussolini to commit aggression against Abyssinia (Ethiopia). They encouraged the German and Italian fascists in their armed intervention in Spain. They connived at Hitler’s annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. Instead of buying peace, all this served to whet the fascists’ appetite for further aggression and to bring on the world war. By their policy of appeasement the British, French and U.S. imperialists lifted a rock only to drop it on their own toes, and history meted out due punishment to them.
But the people of the world pursued another policy, that of dealing resolute counter-blows to fascist aggression. The people of the Soviet Union, China and many other countries firmly opposed the British, French and U.S. imperialist policy of appeasement, courageously shouldered the heavy responsibility of fighting fascism and eventually won not only the war but also the peace.
[Source]
The Suffering the Nazis Caused
We must remember the tragedy millions of Soviet citizens, especially Jews, faced during this war. The Soviet state did its best to evacuate its people when it could, but there were thousands of communities almost entirely exterminated. The Siege of Leningrad, the longest siege in history, was done to weaken the Soviets’ morale, though the Soviet workers knew to defend their land from the fascist beasts. The Nazi sub-humans engaged in all sorts of crimes, including theft, cultural destruction, sexual assault, murder by burning, “extermination” by gas chambers, shootings of ordinary citizens, the exploitation of East European labor for capitalists’ profit, and so much more. Former kulaks and capitalists across the union collaborated with Nazis in fighting the Red Army and exterminating Jews and their fellow Slavs; notable examples of these traitors include the “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists” and the “Russian Liberation Army”. These groups were minorities of their nations—about 250 thousand Ukrainians cooperated with the Nazis while over four million joined the Red Army—but they were not insignificant. The Nazis’ systematic genocide of Jews and other “undesirables” in the Holocaust was obviously too brutal to speak of, but we must remember it and other deeply tragic and horrible parts of this war on this Victory Day.
Anti-communists, in their typical repulsive manner, love to downplay Nazi crimes by saying that “the USSR committed crimes as well!” This is extremely stupid, and it trivializes the Holocaust. Moderate bourgeois historians such as Wheatcroft realize how bad this is, for the Soviet Union’s execution of counter-revolutionaries and the Nazis’ genocide of “undesirable” ethnic groups cannot seriously be compared:
The nature of Soviet repression and mass killing was clearly far more complex than normally assumed. Mass purposive killings in terms of executions were probably in the order of one million and probably as large as the total number of recorded deaths in the Gulag. In this narrowest category of purposefully caused deaths, the situation is exactly the opposite to that generally accepted. Hitler caused the murder of at least 5 million innocent people largely, it would appear, because he did not like Jews and communists. Stalin by contrast can be charged with causing the purposive death of something in the order of a million people. Furthermore the purposive deaths caused by Hitler fit more closely into the category of “murder”, while those caused by Stalin fit more closely the category of “execution”. Stalin undoubtedly caused many innocent people to be executed, but it seems likely that he thought many of them guilty of crimes against the state and felt that the execution of others would act as a deterrent to the guilty. He signed the papers and insisted on documentation. Hitler, by contrast, wanted to be rid of the Jews and communists simply because they were Jews and communists. He was not concerned about making any pretense at legality. He was careful not to sign anything on this matter and was equally insistent on no documentation.
[Source]
Fascists and their sympathizers mention the “Holodomor” and the deaths of the Gulag system to “prove” that “Soviets were evil”, but the former is classic Nazi propaganda while the latter ignores that the Nazi invasion diverted resources from prisons, causing poor conditions and higher death rates. We debunked the “high death toll of communism” here:
Liberals try to demarcate between fascism and capitalism, but anyone who knows history knows that fascism arose to defend capitalism from proletarian revolution:
Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.
The most reactionary variety of fascism is the German type of fascism. It has the effrontery to call itself National Socialism, though it has nothing in common with socialism. German fascism is not only bourgeois nationalism, it is fiendish chauvinism. It is a government system of political gangsterism, a system of provocation and torture practised upon the working class and the revolutionary elements of the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia. It is medieval barbarity and bestiality, it is unbridled aggression in relation to other nations.
German fascism is acting as the spearhead of international counter-revolution, as the chief instigator of imperialist war, as the initiator of a crusade against the Soviet Union, the great fatherland of the working people of the whole world.
Fascism is not a form of state power “standing above both classes — the proletariat and the bourgeoisie,” as Otto Bauer, for instance, has asserted. It is not “the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie which has captured the machinery of the state,” as the British Socialist Brailsford declares. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations.
This, the true character of fascism, must be particularly stressed because in a number of countries, under cover of social demagogy, fascism has managed to gain the following of the mass of the petty bourgeoisie that has been dislocated by the crisis, and even of certain sections of the most backward strata of the proletariat. These would never have supported fascism if they had understood its real character and its true nature.
[Source]
The barbaric crimes of fascists must never be forgotten, and we, as anti-capitalists, need to remember that they are connected to capitalism. Do not fall for the lies that attempt to obfuscate and trivialize fascism’s crimes; instead, attack fascism and its root, capitalism!
Common Myths Debunked, Imperialists Exposed
Capitalist-imperialist historians admit that the Soviets were instrumental in beating the Nazis, but they also claim that they did not liberate eastern Europe; rather, they assume, the Soviets subjugated it. This claim is absolutely untrue, for the Red Army assisted independent partisan movements instead of forcing them under its control. It cooperated with the new independent People’s Democracies, and it did not force them to follow any dictated terms. In fact, it was even fine with the countries not having communist leadership.
Less well known is the fact that, as the war came to an end, Stalin did not plan to install communist regimes in Germany or in any of the Eastern European countries liberated by the Red Army, and that he also discouraged communist parties in France, Italy, and elsewhere in Western Europe, liberated by the Americans and their allies, from trying to come to power. He had already formally stopped promoting worldwide revolution in 1943, when he dissolved the Comintern, the communist international organization created for that purpose by Lenin in 1919. This policy was resented by many communists outside of the Soviet Union, but it pleased Moscow’s Western allies, especially the US and Britain. Stalin was eager to maintain good relations with them, because he needed their goodwill and cooperation to achieve the objectives, described above, aimed at providing the Soviet Union with reparations, security, and the opportunity to resume work on the construction of a socialist society. His American and British partners had never indicated to Stalin that they found these expectations unreasonable. To the contrary, the legitimacy of these Soviet war aims had been recognized repeatedly, either explicitly or implicitly, in Tehran, Yalta, and elsewhere.
The aspirations of the Soviets with respect to reparations and security, described above, were not unreasonable, and the US and British leaders had recognized their legitimacy, explicitly or implicitly, during a meeting of the Big Three in Yalta in February 1945. But Washington and London were far from enchanted by the prospect of seeing the Soviet Union receiving its due after having made such outstanding efforts and sacrifices on behalf of the common anti-Nazi cause. The Americans, in particular, had their own ideas with respect to postwar Germany and Eastern as well as Western Europe, to be examined in the next chapter. Reparations, for example, would enable the Soviets to resume work, possibly successfully, on the project of a communist society, a counter system to the international capitalist system of which the USA had become the great champion.
[Source]
The USSR treated the People’s Democracies fairly, at least so long as it remained socialist:
Most of the East European countries, with the exception of Albania, did not originally develop socialism on the strength of their own revolutionary movements. These countries were liberated from the Nazi yoke in the closing stages of WW2 by the heroic advances of the Soviet Red Army. In all these countries the Soviet armies were greeted as liberators, and, following the war, the friendship of the Soviet Union and the advent of socialism were welcomed with great enthusiasm by the peoples of the region. In these countries the reactionary classes, the landlords and big capitalists, had in the main allied with or were completely subservient to the Nazis. With the Allied victory these forces lost all semblance of legitimacy and power.
Thus, it was possible after 1945 for these countries to begin the construction of socialism. The form of workers’ state adopted by most of the countries was called “people’s democracy” because, due to the particular conditions at the time, the dictatorship of the proletariat was based upon a democratic alliance between the working class, the peasantry and sections of the petty bourgeoisie under the leadership of the proletariat. Though these countries, like the Soviet Union, had suffered severely in the war, they began to rebuild their shattered economies on an independent and self-reliant basis with the fraternal cooperation and aid of the Soviet Union.
The West punished the new People’s Democracies economically by depriving them of the economic aid given to Western Europe via the Marshall Plan; the plan was devised to discourage the people of those nations from supporting communists, who were getting popular for their roles in fighting fascism, and it created the illusion that capitalism was “successful” there. All of this meant that the USSR and the People’s Democracies needed to increase cooperation with each other:
During the war, the U.S. had pledged to help these countries and the Soviet Union rebuild in “gratitude” for the great sacrifices the peoples there had made in the anti-fascist cause. However, when the Marshall Plan was proposed the political strings attached to such aid were unacceptable. The East European nations were in a bind and, though the Soviet Union also faced tremendously difficult tasks of recovery, Stalin encouraged a policy of cooperation, aid and mutual exchange. Stalin’s overall goal was to promote the independent development of the economies of the East European countries, but at the same time he proposed that the socialist nations, as much as possible, cooperate and integrate their economies on the general basis of equality and mutual benefit. Thus, the Council of Mutual Economic Aid (COMECON) was formed.
[Source]
On top of that, the capitalist West barely denazified, but the East completely got rid of its Nazis; the CIA rescued thousands of Nazis in Operation Paperclip and used them as scientists. The stark contrast between the liberal-capitalist and socialist methods of dealing with Nazis are best shown in Germany, where the People’s Democracy purged itself of Nazis, but the bourgeois state to its West allowed fascists to hold power.
After World War II, the Western capitalist allies did little to eradicate fascism from Italy or Germany, except for putting some of the top leaders on trial at Nuremberg. By 1947, German conservatives began to depict the Nuremberg prosecutors as dupes of the Jews and communists. In Italy, the strong partisan movement that had waged armed struggle against fascism was soon treated as suspect and unpatriotic. Within a year after the war, almost all Italian fascists were released from prison while hundreds of communists and other leftist partisans who had been fighting the Nazi occupation were jailed. History was turned on its head, transforming the Blackshirts into victims and the Reds into criminals. Allied authorities assisted in these measures.
Under the protection of U.S. occupation authorities, the police, courts, military, security agencies, and bureaucracy remained largely staffed by those who had served the former fascist regimes or by their ideological recruits—as is true to this day. The perpetrators of the Holocaust murdered six million Jews, half a million Gypsies, thousands of homosexuals, several million Ukranians, Russians, Poles, and others, and got away with it—in good part because the very people who were supposed to investigate these crimes were themselves complicit. …
What happened to the U.S. businesses that collaborated with fascism ? The Rockefeller family’s Chase National Bank used its Paris office in Vichy France to help launder German money to facilitate Nazi international trade during the war, and did so with complete impunity. Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 million from the U.S. government for war damages inflicted on its German plants by Allied bombings. General Motors collected over $33 million. Pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by U.S. firms. Thus Cologne was almost leveled by Allied bombing but its Ford plant, providing military equipment for the Nazi army, was untouched; indeed, German civilians began using the plant as an air raid shelter. …
Hundreds of Nazi war criminals found a haven in the United States, either living in comfortable anonymity or actively employed by U.S. intelligence agencies during the cold war and otherwise enjoying the protection of high-placed individuals. Some of them found their way onto the Republican presidential campaign committees of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush. …
Authorities in these Western European countries and the United
[Source]
States have done little to expose neo-Nazi networks. As the whiffs of
fascism develop into an undeniable stench, we are reminded that
Hitler s progeny are still with us and that they have dangerous links
with each other and within the security agencies of various Western
capitalist nations.
These differences, as well as the West’s rearming of Germany and other provocations, caused Germany to be divided and forced the socialist bloc to be on the defensive:
The GDR was created, almost as a historical accident, in October 1949, out of the former Soviet zone of occupation in Germany. It came about as a response to the introduction of a separate currency in the Western sectors in the summer of 1949, followed by the go-it-alone creation of the Federal Republic in September of that same year. It is another one of those ‘forgotten’ historical facts that it was the Western allies’ surprise introduction of a new currency in the three zones occupied by the Western allies and West Berlin which led the Soviet Union to close transit routes to West Berlin (an island within the centre of the Soviet zone), because the now superfluous old currency would have undermined the economic stability of the East. It was this unilateral action that led directly to the Soviet blockade and the resultant Berlin Airlift.
Even after it came about, the Soviet Union saw the creation of the GDR as a temporary measure with eventual re-unification still the logical outcome. It actually put forward proposals for unification in 1952 but received a hefty ‘no’ for an answer from the West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. He was an adamant opponent of unification under any circumstances other than under a capitalist system. He famously said that he would ‘rather have half of Germany completely than a whole Germany only halfway’. who said in 1954: ‘The best way to regain the German East is rearmament’. And secretly West Germany was re-armed with the help of the USA. …
Many of the leaders of the post-war East German, later GDR, government had a track record of active opposition to the Nazi regime; many had spent years in concentration camps, prison and exile, either in the Soviet Union or in western countries like France, Britain, Mexico or the USA, and a number of them were Jewish. The workers’ and socialist movements within Germany had been effectively destroyed by Hitler and many of the leaders had been murdered in concentration camps, and as result there was a limited number of experienced leaders. The inclusion of prominent figures from Jewish backgrounds in the first and subsequent East German governments and in leading positions of the state also serves to undermine the oft-repeated accusation that the GDR was anti-Semitic and was in stark contrast to the situation in West Germany. …
Right into the 1960s, many highly decorated Nazis and war criminals were occupying top positions within the West German state. There were 21 Secretaries of State and ministers, 100 generals and admirals in the Bundeswehr, 825 senior members of the judiciary, 245 leading civil servants in the diplomatic corps and foreign service who had been top Nazis. Many top lawyers who had willingly enacted Nazi laws and handed down death sentences for political ‘crimes’, and medical professionals who had been involved in inhuman experimentation, race hygiene, genetic selection, forced sterilisations and euthanasia, were reinstated.
[Source]
All of these show us that despite the Soviet victory over fascism in the socialist bloc, there was much work to be done in capitalist countries. In addition, when a socialist country ceases to be socialist and becomes revisionist (socialist in name, capitalist in reality) or even openly capitalist, the state often uses fascist measures to suppress the workers. Sadly, this happened in the USSR and most of Europe’s People’s Democracies; the bourgeois dictatorships that replaced the proletarian states were very oppressive to the working classes.
Revisionist Betrayal
After Khrushchev delivered his “secret speech” condemning Stalin, Georgian anti-revisionist workers, students, and party officials protested against his rightist deviations. What did Khrushchev do? He suppressed them with military force. Western bourgeois media does not want people to know that Marxism-Leninism and genuine socialism were popular among workers, so it hides this event, but even basic research shows just how terrible the revisionists were to the Georgian people. Which East is Red? touches on the occurrence when talking about anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists within the revisionist USSR:
Significant sections of Soviet people who had grown up revering Stalin as a father figure who saved the nation from the Nazi jackboot became confused. How could it be that someone so revered—if at times frightening—could so suddenly be stripped of all his sanctity? Small gatherings of protest began in Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, albeit with no major unrest. In one particular case, however, confusion and contempt turned to rage, and in early March 1956 the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic—Stalin’s birthplace—became a storm-center of pushback by common Soviet citizens against the earliest stages of Destalinization.
The third anniversary of Stalin’s death on 5 March brought out thousands to lay wreaths and flowers at the foot of the statue of Stalin in the main square of Tbilisi, with the knowledge that authorities were planning to tear down the statue shortly. Unrest had already begun the night before, however: according to Soviet Georgian special reports and MVD (Ministry of Interior Affairs) correspondence, a young college student attempted to stab a Soviet Army officer for not setting up an honor guard around the statue of Stalin, where a crowd had gathered that night to commemorate him. The next morning, 50,000 people—primarily Komsomol youth and students—came to Stalin Square to commemorate the death of “the father of the peoples” and 150-200 people laid at the foot of the statue. On 7 March, university and workplace walkouts caused the demonstration to swell to well over 70,000 workers, students, and Party members. That same night, the cities of Gori (Stalin’s birthplace), Sukhumi, and Batumi broke out into unrest. Clearly, the people of Soviet Georgia were not going to allow their revered leader to be put to the dustbin of history without a fight. …
After the Chinese delegate had spoken, clashes began between demonstrators and local militia as they shouted pro-Stalin slogans and hung banners of Lenin and Stalin across the center of the city. Signs of the protests being peaceful ebbed slowly away into the night, as the clashes escalated in ferocity. Finally, the breaking point was reached the next day: workers and students gathered together and violently stormed the Ministry of Communications building. Realizing a full-on revolt was on their hands, the Soviet Army’s district of defense for the Caucasus region, the Transcaucasus Military District, was called into Tbilisi.
The arrival of the Army brought with it immediate tragedy. With the riots now an organized rebellion, tanks appeared around the Stalin monument and opened fire on the crowds, causing the deaths of numerous Georgian protesters. While still unclear as to who fired the first shot—the protesters were now armed with pistols and rifles—the Army’s reaction to the riots was disproportionate at the beginning. The 9 March Massacre—as it came to be known in Georgian history—ended with somewhere between 100 and 800 (according to later Russian sources) dead.
[Source]
The bureaucrats in the USSR (who essentially became capitalists), along with the capitalists in the Eastern European People’s Democracies, were freed under Khrushchev, and this let them acquire more power and wealth parasitically. The working-class was exploited once again, a decade after they were liberated from the Nazis’ totalitarian capitalist grip. Market reforms were implemented nine years later, and this combined with the state bourgeoisie’s economic plans helped squeeze the most surplus value that they could get out of the working-class. To maintain this system after a period of proletarian democracy required fascist repression:
Under Stalin the centralized state apparatus was an extremely effective weapon against all’ brands of counter-revolution, foreign and domestic. But it was only one such weapon. Marxist-Leninists have always held that the most effective weapon against counter-revolution is the armed masses themselves, mobilized around a correct political understanding. Under Stalin a secret political police force played an important role; corrective labor camps and penal institutions of varying types also existed. Although a number of excesses did occur, this apparatus was directed not at suppression of the broad masses but at corrupt party officials, managers, generals and other members of the officer corps, bureaucrats, foreign agents and even officials of the police agencies themselves. ln short, the security and penal institutions of the socialist state under Stalin were instruments of proletarian rule and not of bourgeois repression.
With the seizure of power by the Khrushchev clique, however, the centralized state apparatus was taken from the people and placed in the hands of the people’s enemies. The Soviet bourgeoisie was thus able to move toward a fascist dictatorship without many of the difficulties associated with the transition from a “democratic” bourgeois republic. A strong centralized state was already present, but the key question was which class would this state serve, the proletariat or the bourgeoisie? And even under fascism, the ruling bourgeoisie does not rely 100% on open terror, but also on deceiving the masses. ln the Soviet Union, this takes the form of disguising fascism as socialism—which was done by Hitler as well, but is easier to do in the Soviet Union because genuine socialism really did exist there for decades.
[Source]
Even after capitalist restoration, American imperialists attempted to overthrow the new revisionist states by backing straight-up fascists. Hungary is the best example of this; as the Hungarian proletarian state became bourgeois, US-backed fascists saw a great opportunity to seize power and put Hungary into America’s camp rather than the revisionist USSR’s. Liberals deny that they were fascists, but they cannot maintain this lie forever:
Events in Hungary made it clear that, with the assistance of the United States, a reactionary underground movement had been organized in Hungary which had exploited the difficulties and shortcomings in the work of state organs in Hungary in order to mislead certain sections of the people. …
The anniversary of the rebellion and became a national holiday celebrations are funded by the Hungarian state. All the heinous crimes committed by the fascists are now completely forgiven and forgotten. Participants (all war criminals, murderers, torturers and thugs) are now being deified.
Examples include Bela Kiraly… [a] supporter of the pro-Nazi Hungarian regime before liberation by the Soviets, and of course fought alongside Hitler in the war. After the victory, he received a pardon from Stalin and was even allowed to enter the Communist Party of the country. Comrade Stalin even gave him a post in the army. But this worm Nazi pretty soon prove their ingratitude. In 1956, betrayed their valuesagain. But, again had to suffer the bitter taste of defeat. Humiliated and hated, he fled westward, where, for the third consecutive time, betrays its values. …
And while the fascist thugs been immersed in the privileges and luxuries of the new Nazi era, we see the people suffer renazistificação. People were being persecuted by the color of their clothes (to wear a red star is enough to send someone to prison) while the local CP suffers persecution and threats of being banned. All communists are suffering a series of attacks. …
The major culprit of the rebellion? The traitor Imre Nagy. The man who decided to lead the rebellion. And what is worse, said he was doing in the name of socialism. This man is treated as a hero today by the new Hungarian regime. They even built a statue for him. Why would a regime that openly opposes communism would support a “communist” as he? …
Imre Nagy did everything by fascism in the name of socialism (obviously he lied). He allowed communist statues to be vandalized, communist symbols were desecrated, Soviet flags were burned, and even said he was doing in the name of socialism.
The fascists massacred all they could be a possible threat to a Hungary based on the valuesof “God, country, family.” During the cold war, the fascists claimed that the Soviets killed 30,000. Later it was discovered that only 4,000 died. Once again, the fascists were lying.
[Source]
From this, we must realize that the proletariat needs a tight grip on state power, and it must remain vigilant against opportunists. It must supervise its vanguard party in socialism, and it needs democratic centralism to organize itself!
Conclusions
We must recognize that the slandering of socialism as a system “as bad as, or worse than fascism” is a technique that modern fascists are using to justify their beliefs and normalize them. That is why fascism is rising today, and we as communists must fight fascists and destroy their lies.
Down with fascism, imperialism, and capitalism! Proletarians, attack fascists, maintain class consciousness, and stick together in the struggle against capitalist attacks! Comrades, we must form a communist party in the United States that can organize a people’s army to crush the fascist threat we face! Let not the sacrifices of the comrades of the past go to waste!
Maoism For The Masses 
Leave a comment