Date: 02 Mar 97 18:46:36 EST
From: Chris Burford <100423.2040-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: On the Historical Experience ... 2/4


On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship
of the Proletariat"

As published in People's China, 16th April 1956


2/4


 Leaders of Communist Parties and socialist states in various fields 
are duty bound to do their utmost to reduce mistakes, avoid serious 
ones, endeavour to learn lessons from isolated, local and temporary 
mistakes and make every effort to prevent them from developing into 
mistakes of a nation-wide or prolonged nature. To do this, every 
leader must be most prudent and modest, keep close to the masses, 
consult them on all matters, investigate and study the actual situation
again and again and constantly engage in criticism and self-criticism 
appropriate to the situation and well measured. It was precisely because
of his failure to do this that Stalin, as the chief leader of the Party
and the state, made certain serious mistakes in the later years of his 
work. He became conceited and imprudent. Subjectivism and one-sidedness
developed in his thinking and he made erroneous decisions on certain 
important questions, which led to serious consequences.

 With the victory of the great October Socialist Revolution, the people
and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, under the leadership of 
Lenin, established the first socialist state on one-sixth of the earth.
The Soviet Union speedily carried out socialist industrialization and 
collectivisation of agriculture, developed socialist science and culture, 
established a solid union of many nationalities in the form of a union 
of the Soviets, and the formerly backward natonalities in the Soviet 
Union became socialist nationalities.

During the Second World War, the Sovet Union was the main force in 
defeating fascism and saving European civilization. It also helped the 
peoples in the East to defeat Japanese militarism. All these glorious 
achievements pointed out to all mankind its bright future - socialism 
and communism, seriously shook the rule of imperialism and made the 
Soviet Union the first and strong bulwark in the world struggle for 
lasting peace. 

The Soviet Union has encouraged and supported all other socialist 
countries in their construction, and it has been an inspiration to the 
world socialist movement, the anti-colonialist movement and every other
movement for the progress of mankind. These are the great achievements 
made by the people and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 
history of mankind. The man who showed the Soviet people and Communist 
Party the way to the great achievements was Lenin. In the struggle to 
carrry out Lenin's principles, the Central Committee of the Commmunist 
Party of the Soviet Union, for its vigorous leadership, earned its 
credit, in which Stalin had an ineffaceable share.

 After Lenin's death Stalin, as the chief leader of the Party and the
state, creatively applied and developed Marxism-Leninism. In the 
struggle to defend the legacy of Leninism and against the enemies of 
Leninism - the Trotskyites, Zinovievites and other bourgeois agents -
Stalin expressed the will and wishes of the people and proved himself 
to be an outstanding Marxist-Leninist fighter. The reason why Stalin 
won the support of the Soviet people and played an important role in 
history was primarily because he, together with the other leaders of the 
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, defended Lenin's line on the 
industrialization of the Soviet state and the collectivization of 
agriculture. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, by carrying out this
line, brought about the triumph of socialism in the Soviet Union and 
created the conditions for the victory of the Soviet Union in the war
against Hitler; these victories of the Soviet people conformed to the 
interests of the working class of the world and all progressive mankind.

It was therefore also quite natural for the name of Stalin to be greatly
honoured throughout the world. But, having won such high honour among
the people, both at home and abroad, by his correct application of the 
Leninist line, Stalin erroneously exaggerated his own role and counter-
posed his individual authority to the collective leadership, and as a 
result certain of his actions were opposed to certain fundamental 
Marxist-Leninist concepts which he himself had propagated. On the one
hand, it was recognized that the masses were the makers of history,
that the Party must keep in constant touch with the people and that 
inner-Party criticism from below must be developed. On the other hand,
the cult of the individual was accepted and fostered, and the 
arbitrariness of a single person prevailed. Thus Stalin found himself in 
a contradiction on this question during the latter part of his life, with
a discrepancy between his theory and practice.

 Marxist-Leninists hold that leaders play a big role in history. The 
people and their parties need forerunners who are able to represent the 
interests and will of the people, stand in the forefront of their historic
struggles and serve as their leaders. But when any leader of the Party or
the state places himself over and above the Party and the masses instead 
of in their midst, when he alienates himself from the masses, he ceases 
to have an all-round, penetrating insight into the affairs of the state.
As long as this was the case, even so outstanding a personality as Stalin
could not avoid making unrealistic and erroneous decisions on certain 
important matters. Stalin failed to draw lessons from isolated, local and 
temporary mistakes on certain issues and so failed to prevent them from 
becoming serious mistakes of a nation-wide or prolonged nature. During the 
latter part of his life, Stalin took more and more pleasure in this cult 
of the individual, and violated the Party's system of democratic 
centralism and the principle of combining collective leadership with 
individual responsibility. As a result he made some serious mistakes such
as the following: 

he broadened the scope of the suppression of counter-
revolution; he lacked the necessary vigilance on the eve of the anti-
fascist war; he failed to pay proper attention to the further development
of agriculture and the material welfare of the peasantry; he gave certain
wrong advice on the international communist movement, and, in particular, 
made a wrong decision on the question of Yugoslavia. On these issues, 
Stalin fell victim to subjectivism and one-sidedness, and divorced himself
>from objective reality and from the masses.

 The cult of the individual is a foul carry-over from the long history
of mankind. The cult of the individual is rooted not only in the exploiting 
classes but also in the small producers. As is well known, paternalism is a 
product of small-producer economy. After the establishment of the 
dictatorship of the proletariat, even when the exploiting classes are 
eliminated, when small-producer economy and a socialist society has been 
founded, certain rotten, poisononous ideological survivals of the old 
society may still remain in people's minds for a very long time.
"The force of habit of millions and tens of millions is a most terrible 
force" (Lenin). The cult of the individual is just one such force of 
habit of millions and tens of millions. Since this force of habit still 
exists in society, it can influence many government functionaries, and 
even such a leader as Stalin was also affected by it. The cult of the 
individual is a reflection in man's mind of a social phenomenon, and 
when leaders of the Party and state, such as Stalin, succumb to the 
influence of this backward ideology, they will in turn influence society,
bringing losses to the cause and hampering the initiative and creativeness
of the masses of the people.

 The productive forces of society, the economic and political system of 
socialism and the Party life, as they develp, are increasingly coming into
contradiction and conflict with such a state of mind as the cult of the 
individual. The struggle against the cult of the individual which was 
launched by the 20th Congress is a great and courageous fight by the 
Communists and the people of the Soviet Union to clear away the 
ideological obstacles in the way of their advance.


[cont 3/4]



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