2 SOCIALIST APPEAL SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1939 By Max Shachtman.
WORKERS FORUM Behind the Stalin Hitler Pact What It Is and What It Isn But after (Concluded from Last Issue)
Workers Traded for Alliances In Lenin time, the Soviet government made more than one diplomatic or commercial agreement with capitalist countries. That was unavoidable then, and remains unavoidable so long as a workers government is surrounded by a hostile world. But if Lenin made a diplomatic agrec.
ment with Germany or France, he did not compel the revolutionary movement in those countries to stop fighting its own capitalist class and government.
Stalin changed all that. While he was seeking an alliance with England, France and the United States, especially in the past four years, the Communist Parties in those countries tried with might and main to make an alliance with the home capitalist government and urged the labor movement as a whole to follow suit. Where the Communists had once been the champions of labor independence and militancy, Stalin converted them into the champions of labor subordination and docility to capitalism.
In practise; therefore, especially in recent years, socialism in one country meant that Stalin traded off Communist Party support to any government, no matter how reactionary, no matter how many millions of colonial slaves it oppressed, so long as it promised to be an ally in protecting the Soviet bureaucracy, In practise, also, Stalin Russian nationalism meant putting the fate of the Russian Revolution into the hands of cynical imperialist diplomats who pretended for a moment to be friendly, instead of where it belongs into the hands of the Russian and international working class.
In practise, this working class was confused, demoralized, and driven under the yoke of its enemies.
Stalin Reactionary Dual Policy Thus, the interests of the ruling bureaucracy in Russia have come into ever sharper and finally irreconcilable conflict with the interests of the Russian masses, of the Soviet Union itself, and of the international working class. To maintain its increasingly precarious position, this bureaucracy is ready to sacrifice the interests of the Soviet people and of the labor movement throughout the world. And that is how it came to sign the pact with Hitler.
It may be said that the negotiations for the pact with Hitler must have been going on secretly for a long time.
That is undoubtedly true. The former head of the Military Intelligence Service of the Soviets in Western Europe, Walter Krivitsky, revealed the fact that some time ago Stalin sent a special emissary, Kandelaki, to Berlin to press Hitler for an alliance. Then how is one to explain the pubKíc efforts, made during this same period, to form an alliance with the democratic Powers, France and England?
The explanation reveals the reactionary dual policy that Stalin has been pursuing. It has already been pointed out that Stalin fears war. But he fears especially such a war as the Soviet Union and its bureaucracy are involved in, for that would in all likelihood spell his doom.
It would, however, be wrong to jump to the conclusion that Stalin is a real prop of peace. The same reasons that dictate his yearning for peace for Russia, dictate a policy of war wongering in all the other important countries of the world!
Spanish Civil War of Marx and Lenin. So in May Veteran Appeals mailed my Party book back tu 13th Street.
To Members Now the complete reversal of the entire line of the Third InDear Editor: ternational as a result of the am sending this letter to liitler Stalin pact and the unanyou and to the editors of other imous acclaim given this pact labor periodicals because by the Browders without the was completely shattered at Munich. The democratic im Seen with a somewhat distorted vision, the report is want to present my case, which slightest consultation or discusperialists showed that they would much rather give Hitler nonetheless substantially correct. believe is typical of many in Sion with the ranks prior to the free rein in his drive to the East, that is, against Russia, the labor movement today, be pact, show for even the blind to than they would make an alliance with Russia to smash Both Stalin and Hitler Fear Revolutionists fore as wide an audience as see that the Comintern is nothpossible. hope in this way to ing more than an instrument of Hitler and Mussolini. Especially when they reflected that It is not the discredited pawn of Stalinist diplomacy, the help crystallize the discontent Stalin foreign policy with no after Fascism cracked up in Germany and Italy, revolutions Communist International, that Fascism fears. As the ban the rank and file of the Com justification of anything Stalin which is now widespread among reason for existence except the would break out and spread rapidly to France, England ner bearer of the working class revolution, of the revolu inunist Party, and so help in does. Remember in the Daily and God knows where else!
tion for socialism, it sees the Trotskyists the Fourth bringing these people into the worker, especially in Harry Stalin therefore had to come to terms with Hitler. And International. And it is right, for the Fourth International struggle which now must be Gannes column, the heated de waged with utmost intensity was that a Soviet Nazl pact Hitler chose the moment for springing the announcement is the mortal, implacable foe of Fascism, of imperialism in against the second imperialist was so much as contemplated.
of the pact which would give him the best position in start general, of capitalist oppression and as their foe it shall world war day of stunned siing his next conquest, Poland.
triumph!
Up until May, when resign lence on the part of the Dally ed from the Communist Party. Worker this same Harry Gan But though he capitulated to Hitler, it does not follow That is why the Socialist Workers Party summons every had been a Stalinist sympa es was applauding the pact that Stalin would object violently to having another World militant worker who is conscious of his class interests, who as enthusia: thizer for five years and a parcally as he War explode, with the democracies fighting the fascist is imbued with the real spirit of internationalism, to rally one year in Spain with the Fif ty member for two, including had hissed it a few days before.
Browder first attempted to aggressors and the Soviet Union staying out of the war to its great banner and to fight in the great cause. Our call teenth International Brigade. justify the Stalin Hitler pact on as long as possible. Quite the contrary! Stalin continues to is addressed in particular to the rank and file of the ComFor a long time had tried to the basis of an escape clause drive in just that direction. Although he has made his peace munist Party and the Young Communist League and their regard the Democratic Front which turned out to be non exwith Hitler for a short time, as we shall see later on, he sympathizers.
policy as merely a temporary Istent. Then the non existence tactic. But my experiences in of an escape clause was apcontinues to instigate a war in which he will not participate. The Soviet Union is not relieved of the threat of attack; Spain convinced me that this plauded as strengthening the As said above, while he is a pacifist out of fear at home, that threat is aggravated. Hitler had a non aggression pact policy resulted from something pact. And now a few days after iar deeper and more organic the signing of the pact as a he is a warmonger abroad.
with Poland not so long ago. But as soon as he had that than mere tactical considera blow for peace where is the tions.
That explains the seemingly contradictory statements of country well encircled, he denounced the pact on one presoddess of peace? Flat on her Bureaucratic Control back. Shipments of cotton and the various Communist Parties on the subject of the Hitler tense or another and prepared to absorb the country into In Spain suffered with the gasoline from the Soviet Union Stalin pact which have proved so puzzling to many. The Greater Germany. Stalin policy facilitates the coming at rest of the rank and file from are now arriving Nazi GerAmerican, British and French Communist Parties, while tack upon Russia because, by giving Hitler a free hand the arbitrary and dictatorial at many as a result of Stalin Litude of the Communist Party enthusiastically endorsing Stalin appeasement policy to through Poland, he grants him a highly important stra bureaucracy toward the ranks.
Comrades in the Communist wards Hitler, demand in the same breath that Chamber tegical base of operations against the Soviet Union. To discovered that most of the Party, now you can see the lain, Daladier and Roosevelt resist the aggressor that morrow or the next day, Hitler will seek to repay Stalin officers, both military and po: bureaucracy. It is time to leave is, go to war against Hitler. The two confusing and appar for the pact in even more ringing coin than he is repaying above with no interests in View this party and to build a new ently conflicting positions form a harmonious unit, how Poland. Every worker, every Communist worker, must un except those of the Communist revolutionary force.
ever, once we understand the basic consideration of the des derstand that Party bureaucracy and selVeterans of the Spanish Civil perate Soviet bureaucracy: Every worker must be also clearly aware now of the dom for their military ability. War, can you see that the VetKeep ourselves in the saddle, preserve ourselves by hook monstrous crime that was perpetrated by Stalin in his ary way of the ranks electing by the stalinists? It time to The democratic and revolution crans of the Abraham Lincoln or crook, and everything else the labor movement, the series of trials and purges. How many thousands of Communist International, the colonial peoples, the twaddle revolutionists did he send to their deaths in the last few much as considered by these form your own organization, bureaucrats. Like the rest of free from ex commissars and about democracy and peace. can go hang!
years on the charge of being Trotskyist agents of Hitler. the rank and file suffered Albacete generals. an indepen Hitler Gave Away Nothing We called the trials frame ups, and now, by signing the noyance of censored mati in ans Organization will enable pact with Hitler, Stalin draws the black pencil of emphasis which objects of value, food. us to help lead the workers of Will the bureaucracy succeed in keeping itself in the under our charge. While he was framing up and assassinat cigarettes, or clothing seemed the United States in the struggle against imperialist war Soviet saddle? Not the slightest hesitation need be felt in ing opponents, all critics past, present or potential Communist Party censors. ThisThe blood of our comrades replying categorically: NO! The only point to be resolved with the accusation of Hitlerite agents he was busily enis this: the abominable Stalinist clique will be crushed at a gaged in becoming the principal agent of Hitler! The Mos me, but could not help observ. time to end the last vestige of later stage by Hitlerism, in which case, a new era of reac cow Trials, the horrible purges, the nightmare of terror in the disheartening effect it his influence in the labor movehad upon the morale of many of ment.
tion will open up from which the world may not emerge for these were all part of the preparations an alliance witin my comrades in arms, espe Sept. 1938 PETER STURGEON a long, long time; or it will be swept into the discard by a Adolph Hitler and his bandits.
cially in view of the privileges resurrected revolutionary movement of workers and peas Together with Ribbentrop, Molotov and Stalin signed ficers as a whole.
which were enjoyed by the ofBY THEIR OWN WORDS ants inside the Soviet Union itself. All our hopes and all the death warrant of the Communist Parties. Stalin long Upon my return from Spain, SHALL YOU KNOW THEM our energies must be directed towards the latter solution of ago drained the revolutionary blood out of them. Now he is found out that Maja, the gen Doar Editor: the mortal crisis the Russian Revolution is experiencing. smashing them bodily. Their organizational disintegration sad who shot down my fellow would like to call to the atin the streets of Mad tention of the Appeal readers Will Hitler really attack the Soviet Union? Whoever is taking place at a terrific rate before our very eyes. rld in March of this year was, the following quote from Molo examines the situation intelligently must reply, Yes! The as had suspected, a member tov speech on the Stalin Hitler The Road of Struggle Is Open!
of the Communist Party. He Pact (printed in the Datly feeble Stalinist arguments that the pact has weakened the Axis are so much nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at Where will those sincere and devoted workers go who has not yet been expelled. worker, Sept. pake learned too that Stalin had been Only the instigatore of a that.
are now abandoning the Communist Parties by the thou selling oil and grain to Italy general European war can be throughout the entire war. displeased by this state of afWhat Stalin gave away in the pact we have already seen. sands in England, France and the United States?
These goods, particularly oui, fairs the Stalin Hitler Pact. What did Hitler abandon? His designs upon Russia, We know where the bureaucrats will go. They will rewere forwarded to General those who under the mask of pecially on the granary of the Ukraine and the mineral main the paid lackeys and scribblers of the Kremlin despot, Elencenter the use of the fas pacifism would like to traito general conflagration in Buriches of the Urals? Not for a moment! His idea of im or they will become full fledged servants of their own imRead Marx mediately attacking the Soviet Union? He didn have to perialist overlords.
Disturbed by these terrible Those who have been the give up that idea, for the simple reason that he did not con But the Communist workers? Will they go over to capicontradictions went to the loudest proponents for the past works of Marx and Lenin for three years of a war of the detemplate such an attack at this time. His objective, for the talism? Will they become the dupes of that fantastic fraud clarification and guidance, and inocracles to fight the fasciat time being, is more modest the conquest of Poland and known in capitalist society as democracy. Will they read what the Communist Par aggressors (under the mask Stalin gave him invaluable aid in achieving his goal. abandon the class struggle entirely, and become docile serfs forgotten the corroding effect the stalinist parties. We wonder ty seems to have completely of pacifism. have been.
He did abandon Japan, of that there is no doubt. And the of the rulers of industry and finance, willing cannon fodder of reformism on the working these parties understand that Stalinist press presents this as a tremendous victory. But it of the coming war?
class and the inevitability of Molotov and Stalin Row call is, as usual, only duping itself and its followers. Hitler The Stalinist party is through, and nobody will mourn war under capitalism. How do them of a general these facts fit into People European abandoned a very much weakened Japan, which had already at its burial. Nobody will try to defend the Stalinazi pact Frontism and Collective SecurFraternally served his purposes for the current stage of developments. in a serious trade union, in a Jewish organization, or for ity? These policies were clearly opposed to the basic teachings Rochester, Hitler abandoned Japan for the time being, and only for that matter wherever intelligent workers are assembled.
the time being, in exchange for a much solider ally.
What then?
Hitler Understands Stalinism We say: there is a need, greater than ever today, to struggle against reaction, against the capitalist offensive, And he did abandon the so called Anti Comintern for socialism and freedom, for peace and plenty. There is Pact. Small consolation! The fight against the Commun a road to struggle, too. That road was broadly marked out ist International was as much a fraud with Hitler as the by the great teachers of the working class movement, in a paper cover edition, at a price every reader of fight for democracy was with Stalin. HITLER HAS Marx and Lenin. That road the workers must take if they the Socialist Appeal can afford.
KNOWN FOR YEARS THAT STALIN HIMSELF are to survive as human beings. if they are to rise to new Add this valuable book to your library.
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crats and the liberal intellectuals who only yesterday PIONEER PUBLISHERS The Berlin correspondent of the New York Times, Otto approved the Moscow frame ups or covered them up, and 116 UNIVERSITY PLACE. NEW YORK CITY Tolischus, who knows what the Nazis are thinking, who presented Stalin as a noble, worthy ally of the Great wrote an extremely significant comment on Hitlerite reac Democracies, are turning tail now and scurrying off like tions to the pact. Speaking of the revolutionary change rats. Now they no longer declare that Soviet democracy that has taken place in Soviet affairs, he said on August 27, and bourgeois democracy are practically the same thing and What Your Dollar Can Do 1939: Such a revolution within Bolshevism is precisely make natural allies; now they expound the new wisdom dollar puts a Soolallst Appeal salesman on an inwhat the Germans assume as a basis for their calculations. that communism and fascism are the same thing and portant street corner for one day.
Stalin, they hold, has turned Right and international Bol make natural allies.
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shevism has become national Bolshevism, which eliminates Their conclusion? Their road? On to a new War to Ten dollars puts a full time field organizer to work for the menace of an international Conmunism backed by Mos Make the World Safe for Democracy? On to the trenches!
one week in the anti war campaign.
cow. If that is true, the dead Marshal Tukhachevsky has Long live the divine goal of modern humanity the battletriumphed over George Dimitroff with the paradoxical re field graveyard!
sult that the Communist parties in various other countries Our road was never theirs. Our road leads to the great Anti War Campaign Committee Socialist Workers Party have been left high and dry. However, according to the socialist society. Our methods are the methods of militant 116 University Place, German view, they have been regarded in Moscow as and uncompromising class struggle against all exploitation Trotskyists anyhow, as revealed during the Spanish conDear Friends: and iniquity. Stalin has succeeded only in discrediting flict, which is regarded here as a turning point in Bolshevist Stalinism. The banner of revolutionary struggle of the enclose. As a contribution to the saw war work of the Socialist Workers Party.
developments. They are, therefore, expected to adopt Leon Fourth International, continues to fly without a shameful Trotsky as their leader and perhaps even to start a revoluspot upon it.
tionary campaign against Stalinism within Russia which On to the victory of socialism and freedom!
Address would complete the revolutionary circle. The End)
rope.
GUERIN FASCISM and BIG BUSINESS The Practice of Appeasing Hitler The Soviet Union is immediately and directly threatened on two sides: by Japan on the East and by Germany on the West. Neither the Japanese rulers nor Hitler have ever made a secret of their ambition to carve up the Soviet land.
By herself, Japan is not so serious a menace to Russia, especially now, when so much of her strength is exerted in maintaining conquered Chinese territory. The principal Soviet enemy thus becomes Hitler. It has therefore been Stalin policy at bottom, since the Nazis came to power in 1933, to appease Hitler, to come to terms with him, to make an alliance with him. Russia would then be in a position to deal comparatively easily with Japan in the East.
If this basic point is borne in mind, much that was obscure in Stalinist policy becomes clear. It will be easier, for example, to understand why the Stalinist press in France, instead of solidarizing itself with the despairing young Jew Herschel Grynzspan who sought to protest Hitlerite antiSemitism by shooting Von Rath, denounced him as a Nazi or Trotskyist spy! To understand the shameful silence from Soviet officialdom on the occasion of Hider barbarous pogroms against the Jews. To understand why Jewish refugees could find no haven in the Soviet Union. To understand what Walter Duranty meant when he cabled the New York Times that after all, Stalin has killed off as many Jews as Hitler did. To understand why Litvinov was purged (how could a sensitive Aryan like von Ribbentrop shake hands with a Jewish Foreign Commissar. And perhaps even to understand why the leader of the Spanish Communist Party, General Miaja, joined the notorious Madrid Defense Junta which graciously handed over power to Franco Hitler supported troops!
Policy Breeds Contradictions The concentration on making a deal with Hitler has frequently been interrupted, so to say, for two reasons: one, by the hope of making an alliance with the democracies to squeeze Hitler into a corner and prevent him from assaulting Russia; and two, by the hope that the negotiations with the democracies would frighten Hitler into speeding up an agreement with Stalin.
The first hope, illusory and utopian from the beginning, Name