PROGRESS
PUBLISHERS
MOSCOW
[1]Translated from the Russian by David Skvirsky
Designed by V. Yeremin
PA3BHTHE PEBOJHOUHOHHOH TEOPHH KOMMVHHCTHHECKOH HAPTHEH COBETCKOrO COIO3A Ha amviHftcKOM H3biKe __COPYRIGHT__ First printing 1971While working on the grandiose undertaking of building socialism and communism in the USSR, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has always regarded the development of Marxist-Leninist science as one of its principal tasks.
Its own experience and the Soviet people's monumental achievements during the half-century since the Great October Socialist Revolution, states the CC CPSU decision ``On Measures to Promote the Social Sciences and Enhance Their Role in the Building of Communism" (1967), demonstrate the dynamic power of revolutionary theory and show that the CPSU has been and remains unshakably true to MarxismLeninism and continues, as it has always done, to wage a determined struggle against its enemies. Its guideline has always been Lenin's tenet that the ``role of foremost fighter can only be fulfilled by a Party guided by foremost theory''.
In its theoretical and practical work the CPSU steadfastly abides by the Leninist principle of combining the successiveness of past revolutionary experience with a creative approach to the solution of new problems. It has always been concerned with elaborating theory, with developing'the teaching of Marxism-Leninism. On the basis of its own vast practical experience, the Party has enlarged on and enriched the Marxist teaching on the socialist revolution, the dictatorship 5 of the proletariat and socialist construction; it has worked out the theoretical problems underlying industrialisation, collectivisation of agriculture, the cultural revolution, the promotion of Soviet democracy, socialist nations and the multi-national Soviet state; it has brought to light the basic laws and motive forces of the development of socialist society, and defined the cardinal tasks and conditions of the gradual evolution of socialism into communism; it has made a colossal contribution towards establishing the principles of proletarian internationalism.
Along with other Marxist-Leninist Parties, the CPSU has contributed towards defining the character of the contemporary epoch, the motive forces and the prospects of the world revolutionary process, and towards substantiating the ways and means of the transition of different countries and peoples to socialism under present-day conditions. The CPSU took a most active part in the work of all international meetings of fraternal Communist and Workers' Parties and in drawing up key documents reflecting the interests of each Communist Party and of the international communist movement as a whole.
This volume is an attempt to sum up the contribution that has been made by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union towards developing revolutionary theory on a number of major problems after Lenin's death.
The articles in this volume trace the Party's development of three components of Marxism: philosophy, political economy and scientific communism. With Lenin's methodological assessments and Party documents as their guideline, the authors analyse the principal trends of the development of modern imperialism, show how much the CPSU has contributed towards enriching the Leninist theory of socialist revolution, deal with questions of the economic theory of socialism and the further development of Lenin's teaching on the Party as the most potent political weapon of the working class in the struggle for socialism and communism, 6 show the constructive role played by the socialist state, and examine the principles underlying the scientific leadership of social development. In addition, the articles in this volume deal with the problems of the strategy and tactics of the international communist, working-class and national liberation movements, the development of the world revolutionary process, and the historic mission of the working class, which is at the core of the modern epoch and is called upon by history to effect mankind's transition from capitalism to socialism.
As a result of the Soviet people's dedicated work and of the Communist Party's theoretical and practical activities, mankind today has a socialist society and a time-tested science of the building of socialism. The Communist and Workers' Parties of all countries draw upon the CPSU's experience not only in the struggle to overthrow the old system but in the great work of building the new society--- socialism and communism.
[7] ~ [8] __ALPHA_LVL1__ LENINISMP. N. Pospelov
__NOTE__ Author(s) is (are) above LVL in original.No event in world history has so powerfully and profoundly influenced the subsequent course of history and the world revolutionary process as the Great October Socialist Revolution.
The dedicated work of the people, led by the Leninist Party and inspired by the immortal ideals of Lenin and the October Revolution, in building socialism and communism has changed not only the Soviet Union but the international situation as a whole and the alignment of class forces on a global scale.
In the CC CPSU decision On the Preparations for the Centenary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin the international significance of Leninism is treated from a scientific standpoint: ``With Leninism are linked the most outstanding revolutionary achievements of the 20th century---the Great October Socialist Revolution, which started a new epoch in human history, the formation of the world socialist system, the great liberation battles and the victories won by the working class and all working people over capitalism. Lenin's name has become the symbol of proletarian revolutions, of socialism and progress, of the communist transformation of the world."^^*^^
Creatively developed by the CPSU and other MarxistLeninist Parties under new historical conditions, the allconquering teaching of Marxism-Leninism has withstood all _-_-_
~^^*^^ On the Preparations for the Centenary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Decision of the CC CPSU, Moscow, 1968, Russ. ed., p. 4.
9 tests. The renewal of the world touched off by the Great October Socialist Revolution has become an irreversible process. Extremely noteworthy are the high assessments that are being made by the fraternal Marxist-Leninist Parties of the significance of the October Revolution and the subsequent heroic struggle of the CPSU and the whole Soviet people.Descendants and direct heirs of the Paris Communards, the French Communists noted in a political resolution adopted by their 18th Congress that the Great October Socialist Revolution was the ``principal event of the latest period. It opened a new era in the history of man, the era of socialism and communism, of the liberation of people and whole nations. Socialism has ceased to be solely an ideal, a theory, a programme: it has become living reality, too. With the triumph of the October Revolution socialism has turned ... the Soviet Union into the most progressive country in the world as regards its socio-political system, the key branches of science and technology, the growth rates of the productive forces and its education and culture.
``Inspired by the light of the October Revolution and drawing lessons from its victory, the French working people set up their own Communist Party in 1920, and since then it has become the premier political force in our country.''^^*^^
The working people of all countries are advancing towards the world-wide victory of socialism and communism under the banner of Marxism-Leninism and the great ideals of the October Revolution.
Contrary to what the enemies of Soviet power say, it has been proved that all its achievements have not been an historical ``accident'' but are a great historic law prepared by the entire course of preceding development and made real thanks to the correct policy, strategy and tactics implemented by the Party of Lenin. The total and final victory of socialism in the USSR is an event of epoch-making significance. It has been proved, as Lenin perspicaciously anticipated, that mankind has now entered a new stage of development of extraordinarily brilliant prospects.
``All the experience of world socialism and of the workingclass and national liberation movements,'' states the Address ``Centenary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" adopted by the 1969 Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, _-_-_
~^^*^^ L'Humanite, January 12, 1967.
10 ``has confirmed the world significance of the Marxist-Leninist teaching. The victory of the socialist revolution in a group of countries, the emergence of the world socialist system, the gains of the working-class movement in capitalist countries, the appearance of peoples of former colonial and semicolonial countries in the arena of socio-political development as independent agents, and the unprecedented upsurge of the struggle against imperialism---all this is proof that Leninism is historically correct and expresses the fundamental needs of the modern age.''^^*^^ __b_b_b__Marxism-Leninism teaches that the transition from capitalism, which has become a brake on social development, to socialism as the first phase of communism must be accomplished through the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin enlarged on the respective propositions of Marxism to demonstrate that in the epoch of imperialism the socialist revolution can triumph first in several or even one country. By virtue of various economic and political conditions, that country proved to be Russia. The Communist Party stirred the masses to action against tsarism and the exploiting classes and led them in the struggle for the overthrow of imperialism, setting classical examples of the ways and means of accomplishing the democratic and the socialist revolution.
The great feat accomplished by the working class and peasantry led by the Leninist Party has become an unfading model for all Communist and Workers' Parties, and for all the working people. Following the stirring historical example set by the CPSU and the Soviet people, the working people of more and more countries are consummating democratic and socialist revolutions. The peoples of all countries are beginning to see more and more clearly that capitalism brings incalculable calamities and suffering and threatens the world with new devastating wars, while socialism and communism are the road to freedom, peace and happiness.
``As a result of the dedicated labour of the Soviet people and the theoretical and practical activities of the _-_-_
~^^*^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow 1969, Peace and Socialism Publishers, Prague, 1969, p. 41.
11 Communist Party of the Soviet Union,'' states the Programme of the CPSU adopted at the Twenty-Second CPSU Congress, ``there exists in the world a socialist society that is a reality and a science of socialist construction that has been tested in practice. The highroad to socialism has been paved. Many peoples are already marching along it, and it will be taken sooner or later by all peoples.''^^*^^ The Communist and Workers' Parties of all countries use not only the CPSU's experience of struggle for the overthrow of the old system but also its extensive creative experience of building the new society--- socialism and communism.Lenin pointed out that along with the task of consolidating and defending the new society against attack by the imperialist states and the internal counter-revolution, and the task of crushing the armed resistance of the exploiters, the task of building the new, socialist state and organising the economy in line with the objective laws of the development of socialist society moves to the forefront as soon as the dictatorship of the proletariat is established.
It will be recalled that all the forces of the old world--- from world imperialism and the exploiting classes defeated by the revolution to the Mensheviks,^^**^^ Socialist-- Revolutionaries^^***^^ and bourgeois nationalists, who betrayed socialism--- took up arms against the October Revolution and the then young Soviet Republic.
Like the Russian Mensheviks, the leaders of the Second International, who proved to be apostates of Marxism, tried _-_-_
~^^*^^ The Road to Communism, Moscow, 1961, p. 463.
~^^**^^ Menshevism---an opportunist, anti-Marxist-Leninist trend in the Russian Social-Democratic movement. It took shape at the Second Congress of the RSDLP (1903) and was expounded by all the adversaries of the newspaper Iskra, which was headed by Lenin. At the elections to the Party s central organs during the Congress, the Leninists received the majority of the votes and were, therefore, called Bolsheviks, while the opportunists found themselves in the minority and were called Mensheviks.---Ed.
~^^***^^ Socialist-Revolutionaries---members of a petty-bourgeois party formed in Russia in 1902. Championing the rural and urban petty bourgeoisie and relying on the support of the kulaks, the SocialistRevolutionaries linked old Narodnik (Populist) dogmas with individual Marxist tenets, which they revised and distorted. They maintained that individual acts of terrorism were the basic tactical means of struggle and, thereby, inflicted enormous harm on the revolutionary movement in Russia. The Socialist-Revolutionary Party disintegrated and ceased to exist at the close of 1920.---Ed,
12 to provide scientific grounds for their stand by alleging that Russia had not reached the level of development of the productive forces and of cultural progress making it possible to accomplish the socialist revolution and build socialism.In an article entitled ``Our Revolution" Lenin ridiculed these pedantic arguments of the ``heroes'' of the Second International, arguments that had absolutely nothing to do with revolutionary dialectics. He pointed out that the October Revolution had created such decisive requisites of civilisation as the expulsion of landowners and capitalists and, on that basis, the possibility for the workers' and peasants' power and the Soviet system to set out to overtake other peoples. ``Our opponents,'' Lenin wrote, ``told us repeatedly that we were rash in undertaking to implant socialism in an insufficiently cultured country. But they were misled by our having started from the opposite end to that prescribed by theory (the theory of pedants of all kinds), because in our country the political and social revolution preceded the cultural revolution, that very cultural revolution which nevertheless now confronts us.''^^*^^
The Mensheviks maintained that Bolshevism and Soviet power were ``anomalies'', a casual phenomenon in the world socialist movement. They held that historically Bolshevism was doomed to failure, for they could not conceive of socialism being triumphant in a backward country like Russia, where the overwhelming majority of the population was illiterate.
These Menshevik arguments were employed also by the Trotskyites and Zinovievites,^^**^^ who were still in the Party at the time. The Trotskyites argued that a genuine upsurge of socialist economy and the victory of socialism in the USSR would be possible only after the proletarian revolution _-_-_
~^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp. 474--75.
~^^**^^ Trotskyism, a trend hostile to Marxism-Leninism in the workingclass movement. It was called after L. D. Trotsky (1879--1940). The Trotskyites were opposed to Leninism as soon as Bolshevism emerged as an ideological trend. They rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat and held that socialism could not be built in the USSR. On that basis they formed an anti-Party opposition bloc. The Trotskyite opposition found no support whatever in the working-class movement. In 1929 Trotsky was exiled.
Zinovievites---supporters of G. Y. Zinoviev, one of the leaders of the Trotsky-Zinoviev anti-Party bloc, which was formed in 1926. In 1932 Zinoviev was expelled from the Party for factional activities.---Ed.
13 triumphed in the West and only with the direct state support of the victorious proletariat of the West European countries. The Party denounced Trotskyism as a petty-bourgeois, Social-Democratic deviation and smashed it politically. If the Party had not defeated Trotskyism as an ideological trend, it would have been impossible to mobilise spiritually the working class and the Soviet people as a whole for the building of socialist society. But Leninist theory triumphed. It was a triumph of Lenin's prevision that socialism could be built in Russia. The Trotskyites, like the Mensheviks, ultimately slid into the camp of the counter-revolution.``Trotskyism,'' it is stated in the Theses of the CC CPSU on the 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution,\thinspace``sowed distrust for the working class of the USSR, maintaining that socialism could not be built in our country without the victory of the proletarian revolution in the West, and its ideological and political rout was of great importance. The Trotskyites sought to deprive our Party and people of their faith that socialism could be successfully built in the USSR, saying that it was of no importance to the world revolutionary movement. Using the screen of `Left' ultra-revolutionary phraseology they tried to impose an adventurist policy of artificially `pushing' the revolution in other countries and dooming the building of socialism to failure in our country. They demanded the adoption of anti-democratic, militarised methods of leadership of the masses within the country, rejected the Leninist principle of democratic centralism, insisted on `freedom' for factional struggles in the Party and, on this road, slid into anti-Sovietism.''^^*^^
The political struggle against Trotskyism was of the utmost international importance as well. William Z. Foster, prominent leader of the United States and international working-class and communist movement, wrote that in the struggle against Trotskyism ``not only was the fate of the Revolution in Russia at stake, but also that of the world communist movement''.^^**^^
In effect, the Trotskyites and ``Left Communists" accorded the October Revolution a secondary, auxiliary role in the _-_-_
~^^*^^ 50th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Moscow, 1967, p. 12.
~^^**^^ William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals. The World Socialist and Communist Movements from 1848 to the Present, New York, 1955, p. 349.
14 world revolutionary process, the role of ``pusher'' of the revolution in West European countries. From this stemmed the monstrous thesis, propounded by a section of the ``Left Communists" at the time the Brest Peace was signed, that it was possible to sacrifice Soviet power.During the most difficult initial months of the formation of the Soviet state, it was only the wise policy pursued by Lenin that allowed safeguarding the Soviet Republic as the basis and mainstay of the entire world revolutionary process. In his speeches and articles of this period, for example, ``The Chief Task of Our Day'', ``The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government" and ``Original Version of the Article `The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government'~'', Lenin showed the need for enhancing the young Soviet Republic's defence capability and strengthening and promoting its economy along socialist lines.
He regarded the building of socialism and communism as a great internationalist duty of the Communist Party and the working class. Even at a time when the country's material and technical basis of socialism was extremely weak, he pointed out with sublime prevision that after the socialist revolution the Soviet Republic's main influence on the world revolutionary process would be exerted through economic achievements, that on an international scale the struggle would shift to that sphere.
Lenin's theory on the possibility of building socialism in the USSR is based on a profound Marxist evaluation of the dictatorship of the proletariat not only as a weapon for the suppression of the exploiting classes within the country but as a creative force, on the Marxist postulate about the reaction of the political superstructure upon economic development, and on the calculation that the rate of economic advance could be accelerated and the technological and economic backwardness inherited from the past surmounted provided the Soviet power pursued a correct policy.
Exceedingly important propositions on the reaction of the political movement upon economic development, and on the role played by state power are to be found in Engels's well-known letter of October 27, 1890 to Conrad Schmidt.
``The reaction of the state power upon economic development,'' Engels wrote, ``can be of three kinds: it can run in the same direction, and then development is more rapid; it can oppose the line of development, in which case nowadays 15 state power in every great people will go to pieces in the long run; or it can cut off economic development from certain paths, and prescribe certain others.''^^*^^
Further, Engels speaks of the future role of the proletarian dictatorship as of the accelerator of economic development: ``...why do we fight for the political dictatorship of the proletariat if political power is economically impotent?''^^**^^
This prevision has been fully borne out in the struggle for socialism in the USSR and also in other socialist countries.
In May 1917, while the preparations for the October Revolution were being laid, Lenin said that the proletariat had to win political power ``in order to carry out the economic and political measures which are the sum and substance of the socialist revolution''.^^***^^
It would not be superfluous to remind people who depart from Marxism and love to argue about the injurious nature of etatism (i.e., state interference) of these meaningful remarks by Engels and Lenin.
The three years of intervention and the Civil War kindled by the interventionists were a stern test for the Soviet system, which sprang from the October Revolution. In the grim struggle against the crusade of 14 states inspired by Winston Churchill, in the struggle against all the Entente campaigns, and against US and Japanese imperialism, the Soviet people displayed miracles of revolutionary patriotism in defence of their socialist motherland and their right to build a new life in a new society.
Capitalism held its ground after the first round of revolutions that flared up under the impact of the October Revolution as a result of the aggravation of all the contradictions of capitalism. Capitalism held its ground chiefly because during the revolution,ary crises the Right Social-Democrats gave their backing to the imperialist, bourgeois-landowner governments, helping them to suppress the revolutionary movement of the proletariat and splitting its forces. United States imperialism was strangling the revolutionary movement in the European countries through an economic blockade.
Nonetheless, the October Revolution and the young Soviet Republic received massive moral and political support from _-_-_
~^^*^^ Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow, 1962, p. 493.
~^^**^^ Ibid., p. 496.
~^^***^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 460.
16 the world proletariat. The ideals of the October Revolution increasingly found their way into the minds of working people in the capitalist countries. The troops of the imperialist powers sent to strangle the young Soviet Republic refused tq_ fight, the Red Army. There were mutinies among them, one of the largest being the mutiny staged in April 1919 by sailors of the French naval squadron in the Black Sea.In capitalist countries workers refused to load weapons earmarked for use against the Soviet Republic. Huge protest demonstrations were held and ``Hands Off Russia" committees were set up. All this impeded the actions of the interventionists.
In his notes for the report on home and foreign policy to the Ninth All-Russia Congress of Soviets (December 1921) Lenin wrote:
``The incredible has happened: a socialist republic in capitalist encirclement.
``The road of the international revolution is longer and more tortuous, but it is a sure road, otherwise we should not have had what we have (a socialist republic in capitalist encirclement).''^^*^^
The imperialists failed to strangle the Soviet Republic by military force.
Lenin declared that ``we have won against everybody'', that our unity with the workers and working people of all countries had proved to be stronger than the unity of the capitalist countries among themselves.
He wrote that morally and politically we were stronger than anybody because world economic and political development, as a consequence of and after the war, was following the line foreseen by the Party: the contradictions between the imperialist states and their contradictions with the oppressed peoples were growing.
At the same time, Lenin repeatedly stressed that after the war and the intervention the Soviet Republic was for the time being weaker than anybody materially, militarily, technically and economically.
The imperialists were unable to destroy the world's first socialist state by armed force; but they laid waste to it by intervention and civil war, thereby preventing it from immediately taking such a step towards socialism as would _-_-_
~^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 44, 5th Russ. ed., p. 484.
__PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---2635 17 have justified the forecasts of Marxist-Leninist teaching on the advantages of the socialist over the capitalist system in economic and cultural development.A few months later, in the notes for the political report of the CG RCP(B) to the Eleventh Party Congress (March 1922) Lenin wrote:
``The key feature: the gap between the epoch-making grandeur of the tasks set and started and the material and cultural poverty.''^^*^^
In another variant of the notes for this report he formulated more forcefully the principal, the main ``link in the chain" and the tasks confronting the Party and the country:
``1922: the gap (abyss) between the unbounded scale of the task and the material and cultural poverty.
``Fill in this abyss.''^^**^^
Lenin firmly believed and scientifically foresaw that this abyss between the greatness of the tasks and the temporary weakness of our Revolution's material, technical and economic basis would be eradicated.
No statesman or scientist appreciated and took into account the potentialities of the Soviet Republic, its natural wealth, the scope given by the great Revolution to the creative initiative of the people, and the talents and revolutionary staunchness of the working class so well as Lenin.
In his report to the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, ``Five Years of the Russian Revolution and the Prospects of the World Revolution'', Lenin could sum up some results of the first economic successes scored as a result of the New Economic Policy.^^***^^
The cardinal result was that the country had surmounted the terrible famine of 1921. The famine, Lenin pointed out, was caused by the Civil War and the intervention organised by the imperialists. But the imperialists and their myrmidons alleged that it was the result of the socialist economy, calculating that this would frighten the proletariat of the capitalist countries away from the revolution.
_-_-_~^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 45, 5th Russ. ed., p. 414.
~^^**^^ Ibid., p. 411.
~^^***^^ New Economic Policy (NEP) was charted by Lenin for the period of transition from capitalism to socialism and aimed at building socialism by making use of the market and the money economy. It tolerated capitalism, stipulating that political power was to be in the hands of the proletarian state.---Ed.
18One of the key political gains of the New Economic Policy was that it strengthened the alliance of the working class with the peasants. An indication of the political mood of the peasants was that millions of tons of grain were received as tax in kind with hardly any compulsion.
Another major result mentioned by Lenin at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern was the beginning of a general upsurge of the light industry and, in connection with this, an improvement of the position of the workers in Petrograd and Moscow. Lastly, it was found possible to form the first fund amounting to somewhat over the modest sum of 20 million gold rubles for the restoration of the heavy industry, which was the hardest hit by the war.
Speaking of this, Lenin pointed out that ``unless we save heavy industry, unless we restore it, we shall not be able to build an industry at all; and without an industry we shall go under as an independent country''.^^*^^
The very first years of peaceful construction demonstrated that the socialist country had huge potentialities. Suffice it to say that by the time the Party held its Fourteenth Congress, known as the Congress of Industrialisation, the annual rate of growth of industrial output was 66 per cent.
Lenin revealed the fundamental laws governing the economic, socio-political and cultural development of socialist society. In the economy, the decisive and determining sphere of social life in the period of socialist construction, the laws in operation at the different stages of the building of socialism include the replacement of capitalist by public, socialist ownership of the basic means of production, the gradual reorganisation of agriculture along socialist lines, and the planned development of the national economy directed towards building socialism and communism and raising the standard of living. The laws governing socio-political development include: the development and consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its state form---the Soviets; the leading role of the Communist Party in the building of socialism; the alliance of the working class with the main mass of peasants and other strata of working people; the establishment of equality and fraternal friendship between peoples; the defence of the gains of socialism against encroachment by external and internal enemies; the solidarity of the working _-_-_
~^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 426.
19 class of the given country with the working class of other countries, this being called proletarian internationalism. In cultural development the main laws are the consummation of the cultural revolution ensuring the abolition of illiteracy and semi-literacy, the creation of a people's intelligentsia devoted to the working class and all other working people, and to the cause of socialism; the critical assimilation and remoulding of the cultural achievements of the past; the creation of a culture socialist in content and national in form; the reshaping of the cultural make-up of the working people and the enhancement of their ideological level and political awareness. Access to culture helps the people in the building of socialism and communism.With the Marxist-Leninist teaching as its guide, the Communist Party charts its policy on a genuinely scientific foundation with due account of the laws of social development.
In ``The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution'', a programme work written in April 1917, Lenin pointed out:
``From capitalism mankind can pass directly only to socialism, i.e., to the social ownership of the means of production and the distribution of products according to the amount of work performed by each individual. Our Party looks farther ahead: socialism must inevitably evolve gradually into communism, upon the banner of which is inscribed the motto, 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'.''^^*^^
Socialism and communism have features in common. Both the one and the other phase are characterised by social ownership of the.means of production, the absence of exploitation of man by man, and planned, proportionate development of all branches of the national economy. Both phases have the same aim of production, which is to secure the fullest satisfaction of society's growing material and cultural requirements through the steady growth of labour productivity and use of the latest machines and technologies, the all-round development of people and the growth and improvement of social production. Labour for the benefit of society is the cardinal duty of all able-bodied members of society at both stages. Under communism labour will have its own specific features deriving from the exceedingly high level of development of production, science, technology and culture, and _-_-_
~^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24, pp. 84--85.
20 the high level of political awareness. Labour will be the prime vital need of man. Both stages are characterised by the socio-political and ideological unity of the people, comradely co-operation, collectivism, mutual assistance, the absence of social antagonisms and of national and racial oppression, the Leninist principle of democratic centralism in economic management and social relations, fraternal friendship and cohesion of the peoples, and a single Marxist-Leninist ideology.The unity of the two phases---of socialism and communism ---does not rule out distinctions between them determined by the level of maturity reached by the social system, the level of economic, social and cultural development, and other inherent features. Socialism emerges as a result of the revolutionary break-up of the old way of life, of the old social formations; it replaces capitalism, or feudalism, in countries that, after the socialist revolution, start building socialism without having gone through the capitalist stage of development. Socialism thus emerges and develops not on soil of its own but on inherited soil bearing the birthmarks of the old system, birthmarks whose eradication requires a tremendous effort on the part of all members of society.
The Soviet people had to work with dedication to put an end to the relative economic backwardness inherited from the past and surmount the appalling, consequences of the threeyear war against the whole of the capitalist world. In the Soviet Union the building of socialism was started not from the level of 1913, when Russia's economy registered the highest indices of development of peaceful branches of industry, but from the level of 1921, when industry was dislocated by the intervention and the Civil War sparked by the interventionists to the extent that production dropped to 15 per cent of the pre-war level. This circumstance is always ``forgotten'' by the critics of socialism and the apologists of capitalism.
As distinct from socialism, communism grows on its own foundation, which is built by its first phase. The conditions are thereby created for a faster growth of the productive forces ensuring the attainment of the highest level of labour productivity, an abundance of material blessings, and the all-round development of the individual.
An extended characteristic of communism on the basis of Marxist-Leninist propositions is given in the Programme of the CPSU, which states: ``Communism is a classless social 21 system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and full social equality of all members of society: under it the all-round development of people will be accompanied by the growth of the productive forces through continuous progress in science and technology; all the springs of co-operative wealth will flow more abundantly, and the great principle 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' will be implemented. Communism is a highly organised society of free, socially conscious working people in which public self-government will be established, a society in which labour for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement of everyone, a necessity recognised by one and all, and the ability of each person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people."^^*^^
The building of socialism and communism is a lawgoverned process. It makes no allowance for artificial pushing, the forestalling of developments, the premature abandonment of the principles of socialism when they have not yet been exhausted, and the hasty introduction of the principles of communism when the conditions have not ripened for them. As Marxism-Leninism teaches and as practice shows, the transition to communism cannot be effected directly from capitalism without first passing through the stage of socialism. This sort of artificial running ahead could have an enormously adverse effect on the building of socialism and communism and could disrupt the economic and political development of society and undermine the foundations and principles of socialism and communism. A striking example of this is the policy, pursued in China by Mao Tse-tung and his group, of artificially planting people's communes in agriculture at a time when they had not yet gone through the socialist stage. This practice has inflicted colossal damage on China's agriculture and disrupted the country's proportionate economic development.
Lenin insisted that the transition to communism could not be accomplished as a single act, that this transition had to pass through definite stages.
The plan of socialist construction drawn up by Lenin envisaged the building of the material and technical basis as the paramount task. To build this basis it was imperative to industrialise the country along socialist lines through the _-_-_
~^^*^^ The Road to Communism, p. 509,
22 use of modern machinery, collectivise agriculture and, in the process, abolish the last exploiting class---the kulaks. It was also important to carry out the cultural revolution. Lenin accorded electrification the premier role in the socialist reorganisation of industry, agriculture and the life of the people.Everybody knows Lenin's famous formula that `` communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country".^^*^^
A state plan of the electrification of Russia (known as the GOELRO plan), providing for the building of 30 large power stations in the course of 10--15 years, was drawn up on Lenin's initiative in 1920, at the dawn of Soviet power. The scientific character of this plan and its feasibility have been demonstrated by the fact that within 10 years, by 1935, its basic targets had been surpassed by 200 per cent.
It was particularly important to develop the heavy industry as a vehicle consolidating the alliance of the working class with the working peasantry---the highest principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The foundation of this alliance could only be a highly developed industry, first and foremost the production of the means of production, through which the peasantry could be organised in co-operatives resting on a modern material and technical basis, and the promotion of the light and food industries, this being an indispensable condition for steadily raising the people's standard of living.
A prominent role in developing industry and making the Soviet state economically independent of the capitalist countries was accorded by Lenin to science, the state monopoly of foreign trade, and Soviet finances.^^**^^
The opponents of Lenin's plan of socialist industrialisation argued that the basic branches of heavy industry could not conceivably be built quickly. ``It takes a dreamer,'' Trotsky maintained, ``to imagine that we can build all or most of our equipment within the next few years.''^^***^^ Trotsky sought to prove that the Soviet economy would be inevitably subordinated to world (capitalist) economy.
_-_-_~^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 516.
~^^**^^ See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, pp. 36, 73--74, 89--94; Vol. 36, p. 532.
~^^***^^ Roads of the World Revolution. Seventh Extended Plenum of Comintern Executive, Verbatim report, Vol. II, Russ. ed., MoscowLeningrad, 1927, p. 101,
23The Right-wing opposition and some specialists were against accelerated rates of development in the heavy industry, arguing that all the machinery for the economy should be imported. The Party had to adopt a highly principled stand, enforce a high degree of organisation and display unshakable faith in the scientific character and feasibility of Lenin's plans. In a difficult internal and international situation, the CPSU, with the support of fraternal Communist Parties and the Comintern, upheld Lenin's plan of industrialisation and inspired the people to carry it out.
While industrialisation proceeded, the CPSU further developed Lenin's teaching, using the invaluable experience gained by the people in building socialism. Of particular importance in this respect was the Fourteenth Party Congress, which ushered in a new stage of socialist construction by steering a course towards socialist industrialisation, towards the practical implementation of Lenin's ideas about the development of the heavy industry.
This Congress defined the Soviet method of industrialisation, mapped out the sources of accumulation, charted the ways and means of correctly utilising public funds for building a modern (for those days) industry, and set the task of accelerating the training of cadres---workers and specialists--- to manage and improve production.
The Fifteenth Congress and Sixteenth Party Conference considered questions relating to the first five-year plan of economic development and indicated that it was necessary to eradicate disproportions in the national economy. The Fifteenth Congress adopted directives calling for an improvement of planned leadership and for effective capital investments, and pointed out what new industries had to be given priority.^^*^^ With Lenin's ideas as its guideline, the Sixteenth Party Conference adopted an historic appeal to the working people, calling on them to start a socialist emulation drive and showing the role of this campaign in the fulfilment of the first five-year plan.
While remaining immutable in its main aim, the policy of industrialisation was specified and developed in the new conditions by the Sixteenth Congress, the Seventeenth Party _-_-_
~^^*^^ See The CPSU in Resolutions and Decisions of Its Congresses, Conferences and Plenary Meetings of the Central Committee, Part II, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1954, pp. 453--58,
24 Conference, the joint plenary meeting of the CC and the Central Control Commission of the CPSU in January 1933, the plenary meeting of the CC CPSU in October 1932, and the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Party congresses. The Communist Party and the Soviet Government registered a social triumph during the first five or six years of industrialisation by abolishing unemployment.The first five-year plan was fulfilled at a time when the entire capitalist world was being shaken by an unprecedented economic crisis. The results of this plan were of paramount historical significance. A little over ten years after the end of the Civil War and intervention, surmounting economic dislocation, famine and the economic blockade, the Soviet Union proved beyond all doubt that the socialist economic system and the Soviet political system were far superior to capitalism, and showed what gigantic forces and potentialities were inherent in socialism. In the main, the country closed the gap between the grandeur of the epoch-making tasks confronting it and the weakness of the material and technical basis, a problem that had worried Lenin so much. ``Thus,'' the CC and the Central Control Commission noted at their plenary meeting in January 1933, ``the USSR has been transformed from an agrarian to an industrial country, and this has consolidated its economic independence, for the USSR is now in a position to manufacture at its own factories the bulk of the equipment needed by it."^^*^^
The fulfilment of the first five-year plan gave the lie to the specious theories of the Mensheviks, Trotskyites and Zinovievites that it was impossible to surmount the technical and economic backwardness of the Soviet Union, which had been devastated by the interventionists, and blasted their arguments that socialism could not be built in the USSR.
Under the impact of the results of the first five-year plan there appeared in 1935 a book that was interesting in many respects. It was written by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who were prominent in the British working-class movement and had been regarded as leading ideologists of reformism and Fabianism. In the epilogue are the words:
_-_-_~^^*^^ The CPSU in Resolutions.... Part III, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1954, pp. 146--47.
25``At this point we hear an interested reader asking: 'Will it spread?' Will this new civilisation, with its abandonment of the incentive of profit-making, its extinction of unemployment, its planned production for community consumption, and the consequent liquidation of the landlord and the capitalist, spread to other countries? Our own reply is: 'Yes, it will.' But how, when, where, with what modifications, and whether through violent revolution or by peaceful penetration, or even by conscious imitation, are questions we cannot answer.''^^*^^
__NOTE__ Above is not formatted as a blockquote in original. Fix.It must be noted that in a final testament, the Webbs ``placed on record their recognition of the vindication of Marxist theory''.^^**^^
The new tasks of further developing Soviet industry were carried out by the Party during the years of the second and third five-year plans. The technical reconstruction of the entire national economy, the completion of collectivisation in agriculture, the enhancement of the people's standard of living and cultural level and the speeding up of the growth of the defence branches of industry dictated by the deterioration of the international situation were the principal directions in which the Party worked in those years.
The successes in modernising technology and raising the cultural level and political consciousness of the people manifested themselves vividly in the Stakhanov movement^^***^^ and in the growth of the movement for invention and rationalisation. The material and cultural level of the people mounted together with the growth of the socialist industry. The real wages of factory and office workers rose steadily. Thousands of new factories of the light and food industries were placed in operation. The modern plant for them was supplied by the heavy industry. With these new factories in operation the output of consumer goods was substantially increased. Housing construction was started.
The enemies of socialism and some none too clever `` critics'', who are engaged in looking for all sorts of ``snags'' in _-_-_
~^^*^^ Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? Vol. II, London, 1935, p. 1143.
~^^**^^ R. Palme-Dutt, The International, p. 102.
~^^***^^ Named after A. G. Stakhanov, a miner, this was a mass drive for innovation and modern technological methods with the object of stepping up labour productivity at factories and collective farms. It was started in 1935.---Ed.
26 socialist construction, real and imaginary, argue that socialist industrialisation was carried out ``dogmatically'', with lopsided emphasis on the heavy industry, completely overlooking Group ``B'' (consumer goods).Actually, the initial plan for the second five-year period, endorsed by the Seventeenth Party Congress, envisaged much higher rates of growth for the production of the means of consumption than of the means of production. In 1937 the output of the means of consumption was to grow 268.8 per cent over the 1932 level, while production of the means of production was to increase only 209.4 per cent.^^*^^
But in view of the mounting threat of war, this initial plan, approved by the Congress, had to be reconsidered.
The steadily growing scale of the acts of aggression by imperialism, primarily by nazi Germany and militarist Japan, compelled the Party and the Government to channel considerable funds for the expansion of the output of armaments and for the building up of large state reserves of fuel, strategic raw materials and food. The defence industry expanded rapidly under the second and third five-year plans. In the course of the second five-year plan period industrial output increased 120 per cent, while the defence industry increased its output 286 per cent in 1933--1938.^^**^^ It registered an even faster rate of increase in 1939 and 1940.
As a result of the policy of industrialisation, the Soviet people led by the Communist Party turned the Soviet Union into a mighty economic, scientific, technological and military power.
``The country's industrialisation started with the first fiveyear plans,'' states the CPSU decision On the Preparations for the Centenary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, ``was a gigantic battle of the Soviet people for socialism. It created a solid foundation for the development of all branches of the national economy and for the rise of the standard of living. It ensured the country's defence capability and moved the USSR to the front rank of scientific and technological progress. The half-century experience of socialism has borne out that the Leninist policy of building a _-_-_
~^^*^^ Seventeenth Congress of the CPSU(B), Verbatim report, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1934, pp. 356. 358.
~^^**^^ Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU(B), Verbatim report, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1939, p. 435.
27 large-scale socialist industry had been correct.''^^*^^ The socialist industry created by the Soviet people under the leadership of the Communist Party played an immense role, in many ways predetermining victory in the Great Patriotic War.At the close of the pre-war period, Soviet industry occupied first place in the world for the rate of development and one of the first places for the volume of output, the technological level and supplies of mineral raw material.
While working on numerous problems of industrial development, the Communist Party gained vast experience of leading the masses, planning new projects and reconstructing existing branches of industry. It combined administration with economic incentives. It reared efficient Party cadres and economic leaders, and improved the forms and methods of Party work in industry and construction. The CPSU set an unparalleled example of theoretically and practically resolving the problems posed simultaneously by the necessity to surmount the country's age-old backwardness and industrialise and make it economically independent of the capitalist encirclement.
__*_*_*__While building up a socialist industry as the foundation for boosting the national economy as a whole, the CPSU accomplished history's greatest revolutionary change in the socio-economic relations of the peasantry and reorganised agriculture along socialist lines. On this unblazed trail the Party had to surmount the age-old traditions of the peasants and their attachment to their individual farms. It had to break the desperate resistance of the class enemy and of the anti-Leninist groups fighting collectivisation.
In agriculture collectivisation became necessary because the contradiction between socialist industry and the individual, privately owned husbandry resting on a petty-bourgeois foundation grew increasingly more pronounced as the building of socialism progressed. This contradiction could be removed and a homogeneous socialist economy created only by setting up large socialised farms.
_-_-_~^^*^^ On the Preparations for the Centenary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Decision 'of the CC CPSU, Russ. ed,, Moscow, 1968, p. 11.
28The ways and means of turning the small peasant husbandries into large socialist economic units had been generally outlined by Marx and Engels: they visualised producers' cooperatives. This point of departure suggested by the founders of Marxism was comprehensively enlarged on and scientifically substantiated by Lenin in his co-operative plan, which constitutes a concrete programme of building socialism in the countryside with its mass of small peasant farms.
Lenin proved that with the change of the social system, the co-operative existing under the bourgeois system as a capitalist enterprise could not spontaneously evolve into a socialist co-operative. The socialist state had to help to effect this conversion. Lenin defined the fundamental principles for bringing the peasant farms into co-operatives: these were voluntary membership and a gradual transition from the lowest forms to the highest producers' co-operative.
The co-operative plan provided the scientific basis for the' socialist remaking of agriculture and drawing the peasants into the building of socialism. The Fifteenth Party Congress was the turning point in giving effect to this plan and setting the countryside on the road to socialism. ``In the current period the task of uniting and reorganising the small individual peasant farms into large collective farms,'' it was underlined at the Congress, ``must be set as the Party's principal task in the countryside.''^^*^^
By the beginning of 1930 the Party had ensured the creation of the material and political prerequisites for speeding up collectivisation. These prerequisites were prepared by industrialisation, the strengthening of the alliance of the working class with the working peasantry, the development of cooperatives in the preceding years and the determined struggle against the kulaks. The tide turned at the close of 1929 under the impact of these factors: the middle peasants began to join the collective farms. The Party went over to collectrvisation on a nation-wide scale and on that basis began the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.
Socialism advanced all along the line. ``The introduction in the Soviet countryside of large-scale socialist farming,'' it is stated in the Programme of the CPSU, ``meant a great revolution in economic relations, in the entire way of life of the peasantry. Collectivisation for ever delivered the _-_-_
~^^*^^ The CPSU in Resolutions..., Part II, Russ. ed., p. 475.
29 countryside from kulak bondage, from class differentiation, ruin' and poverty. The real solution of the eternal peasant question was provided by the Lenin co-operative plan.''^^*^^This great revolutionary transformation was accomplished on the initiative and under the leadership of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government with the direct and overwhelming support of the working class and the entire working peasantry. It marked the final triumph of socialism in the USSR. The socialist system of economy was consolidated as the only and undividedly predominant system not only in industry but also in agriculture.
In the course of collectivisation the Party enlarged upon Marxist theory and the Lenin co-operative plan. It determined the time for the transition to a policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class, showed that the collective farms were the basic vehicle for socialist construction in the countryside and found that machine-and-tractor stations were the best form of production assistance by the state to the collective farms.
The consolidation of the collective-farm system fundamentally changed the social composition of the countryside. As a class the kulaks were liquidated. By joining the collective farms the former poor peasants, farm labourers and middle peasants became equal economically and socially. They formed a new, socialist class---the collective-farm peasantry---linked with socialist ownership of the means of production.
The collectivisation of agriculture in the USSR opened and tested a road to socialism for the peasantry. The socialist reconstruction of agriculture is an objective law of the building of socialism. ``Lenin's co-operative plan,'' it is said in the Statement of the 1960 Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow, ``has proved its great vitality both for Countries where the peasants' attachment to private land ownership was a long-standing tradition and for countries that have recently put an end to feudal relations.''^^**^^
The peoples of many countries are drawing on the CPSU's experience to effect the socialist reorganisation of agriculture. They are advancing along the road opened by the CPSU _-_-_
~^^*^^ The Road to Communism, p. 458.
~^^**^^ The Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1963, p. 46.
30 and, having regard to the specifics of their own countries, adding much to the Soviet Union's experience. __*_*_*__The cultural revolution that followed on the heels of the Great October Revolution is part and parcel of Lenin's plan of socialist construction.
``After we had solved the problem of the greatest political revolution in history,'' he wrote, ``other problems confronted us, cultural problems....''^^*^^
Analysing the situation in Russia long before the October Revolution, he wrote: ``There is no other country so barbarous and in which the masses of the people are robbed to such an extent of education, light and knowledge---no other such country has remained in Europe; Russia is the exception.''^^**^^ That is why the question of culture was raised to the level of a fundamental political task of the Party and the Government virtually as soon as the dictatorship of the proletariat was established. Through the Soviets---the organs of the new people's power, through which all the working people are drawn into socialist construction---the Party was able to exert an active influence on the shaping of the world outlook of all Soviet people. This was in line with the Marxist understanding of the substance of the cultural revolution, whose objective was to bring to light the entire range of the people's creative possibilities and release man from the bonds holding up his all-round, harmonious development. Socialism creates all the requisites for the full development of the personality: absence of exploitation, free labour, the building up of the material basis for culture, the democratisation of political and social life, and so on.
The purpose of the cultural revolution thus merged with all the other tasks of socialist construction, the most important of which were the upbringing of the new man and the fullest satisfaction of his material and cultural requirements.
``The old Utopian socialists,'' Lenin wrote, ``imagined that socialism could be built by men of a new type, that first they would train good, pure and splendidly educated people, and these would build socialism.
_-_-_~^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 73.
~^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 19, p. 139.
31``We want to build socialism with the aid of those men and women who grew up under capitalism, were depraved and corrupted by capitalism, but steeled for the struggle by capitalism.''^^*^^
In spite of the bourgeois and Menshevik ``theories'' that the working people, whose level of culture and education under capitalism was low, were unable to seize and hold power, Lenin theoretically substantiated the historically distinctive features of cultural development under conditions of the transition from capitalism to socialism. He proved that as a result of the socialist revolution and on the basis of the workers' and peasants' power, the working class and all other working people could quickly master the entire wealth of human culture.
There was an immediate warm response from all sections of the working people to the steps taken by the Communist Party and the Soviet Government to promote cultural development. This conformity of the interests of the people with the work of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government is an inexhaustible source of growth of socialist culture and of the cultural development of the Soviet people. Lenin wrote: ``There is a mighty urge for light and knowledge 'down below', that is to say, among the mass of working people whom capitalism had been hypocritically cheating out of an education and depriving of it by open violence. We can be proud that we are promoting and fostering this urge.''^^**^^
In order to promote the large-scale building of socialism there had to be knowledge---general educational and special ---the people had to master the scientific Marxist world outlook. That was why Lenin always insisted that in order to build socialist society the political revolution had to be supplemented with a cultural revolution, with a revolution in the minds of the people. He noted with satisfaction: ``Nine out of ten of the working people have realised that knowledge is a weapon in their struggle for emancipation, that their failures are due to lack of education, and that now it is up to them really to give everyone access to education.''^^***^^
In ``Our Revolution'', ``Pages From a Diary'', ``On Cooperation'', ``On Proletarian Culture'', ``The Tasks of the _-_-_
~^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 69.
~^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 32, p. 127.
~^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 28, p. 88.
32 Youth Leagues" and other articles Lenin charted the ways of building up a socialist culture, and they underlie the cultural development plans put into effect in the Soviet Union. The cultural revolution started from the very first days of the existence of the Soviet state proceeded apace during the years of socialist industrialisation and collectivisation.Tasks of the socialist cultural revolution in the USSR such as the ousting of bourgeois and feudal ideology from the sphere of culture, the critical processing of the most valuable cultural heritage of the past, the closing of the gap between the people and culture, the winning of the finest representatives of the bourgeois intelligentsia over to the side of the working class and the creation of a new intelligentsia from among the working class and the peasants were largely carried out in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism.
The cardinal achievement of the socialist cultural revolution was the renewal of the working people's spiritual world and a fundamental change in their way of thinking.
In the building up of a socialist culture the Party insisted that everything of value created through the millennia of mankind's development should be solicitously preserved and used to further the building of socialism.
The eradication of illiteracy was one of the immediate tasks of the cultural revolution. More than two-thirds of the population could not read or write, while in the outlying Asian republics there was almost total illiteracy.
Lenin linked the abolition of illiteracy with the political education of the people, saying at the 2nd All-Russia Congress of Political Education Departments on October 17, 1921, that ``so long as there is such a thing as illiteracy in our country it is too much to talk about political education.. .. An illiterate person stands outside politics''.^^*^^
Results were quick to make themselves felt. In 1926 the number of literate people rose to 51 per cent of the population, and in 1939 to over 80 per cent.
The system of public education expanded along with the abolition of illiteracy. Lenin's dream of universal education for children materialised. Nearly 28 million children went to school in the 1936/37 school year.
The country's industrialisation, the creation of new _-_-_
~^^*^^ Ibid., Vol. 33, p. 78.
__PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---2635 33 conditions in agriculture and the reorganisation of the economy raised the demand for specialists for all the branches of the national economy. The Communist Party devoted much attention to the formation of a Soviet intelligentsia. The number of institutions of higher learning increased steadily. By 1936 there were 700 of these institutions with a student body of over half a million. Thanks to the correct policy pursued by the Communist Party, the Soviet higher school was able to bring up fine cadres of a new, people's intelligentsia, who displayed their ability at the projects of the first five-year plans. There were many Communists among the young Soviet intelligentsia.Lenin ascribed to science an exclusively important role in the building of socialism. Of fundamental importance as a guideline was Lenin's ``Draft Plan of Scientific and Technical Work''. This document unequivocally stated that scientists had to be enlisted into the work of reorganising the national economy and clearly implied that science itself had to be promoted by plan.
Lenin regarded the close alliance between scientists, technicians and workers as the guarantee of success in building the new society and as one of the key factors for raising labour productivity, which in the long run was the most important element making for the consolidation of the new social system.
Lenin made it plain that use should be made of the expertise and experience of the old intelligentsia and that it should be drawn into active participation in the country's life. He said that ``there must be a relentless struggle against the pseudo-radical but actually ignorant and conceited opinion that the working people are capable of overcoming capitalism and the bourgeois social system without learning from bourgeois specialists, without making use of their services and without undergoing the training of a lengthy period of work side by side with them''.^^*^^ What a wretched picture is cut by the Maoist leadership of the Communist Party of China who have abandoned the basic propositions of Marxism-Leninism. They regard their ``cultural revolution" as a crusade against all the great achievements of world culture, as the destruction of all the priceless treasures created by man. In effect the ``cultural revolution" is aimed _-_-_
~^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 113.
34 at smashing the Party, trade union and Komsomol organisations in China which are resisting the nationalistic and antiSoviet line steered by Mao Tse-tung. ``The Mao Tse-tung group took up a policy which combined petty-bourgeois adventurism with Great-Power chauvinism disguised by `Left' phraseology; it openly set out on a course intended to undermine the unity of the socialist community and to split the world communist movement.``The adventurist line of the Mao Tse-tung group seriously weakened the positions of the Communist Party and the Chinese working class and gave a free hand to petty-bourgeois and anarchist elements. It seriously threatens the socialist achievements of the Chinese people.''^^*^^
The Leninist approach adopted in the Soviet Union to socialist culture, the heritage of the past and the old intelligentsia allowed socialist culture to make rapid headway.
Lenin underscored the link of the new culture with the old, with its finest, progressive, dem6cratic traditions. He criticised the Proletkult (Proletarian Culture) exponents, who demanded the creation of a new, proletarian art, without taking the complexity of this process into account. In the famous speech on October 2, 1920 at the Third Congress of the All-Russia Young Communist League he said that proletarian culture ``is not clutched out of thin air; it is not an invention of those who call themselves experts in proletarian culture. That is all nonsense. Proletarian culture must be the logical development of the store of knowledge mankind has accumulated under the yoke of capitalist, landowner and bureaucratic society''.^^**^^
The press and book publishing were given every attention by the Communist Party. The new reader, hungry for knowledge, wanted newspapers, magazines and books. Newspaper circulation grew swiftly from 9,400,000 in 1928 to 36,200,000 in 1937, and the number of books published in the same period increased from 270,500,000 to 677,800,000. After the October Revolution literature was brought out in the languages of 61 peoples of Russia, of whom more than 40 had formerly had no written language of their own. In line with Lenin's teaching, the Party promoted all spheres of art. The theatre, painting, sculpture and music were made _-_-_
~^^*^^ 50th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, p. 54.
~^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 287.
35 accessible to the people, and all went through a period of revolutionary renewal.``In the Soviet Union,'' states the CC CPSU decision On the Preparations for the Centenary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, ``the cultural revolution has brought Soviet people education and enlightenment. It has led to the florescence of science, created a people's intelligentsia, consolidated socialist ideology in all spheres of society's cultural life, and preserved and multiplied the treasures of world culture. Inspired by the ideals of the socialist revolution, literature and art have become components of the general proletarian cause, of the nation-wide drive for the attainment of communism.''^^*^^
The socialist cultural revolution was instrumental in raising the literacy and cultural level of the people, in training cadres of the Soviet intelligentsia -and in drawing Soviet people into increasingly more active participation in socialist construction.
__*_*_*__As a result of the consistent fulfilment of Lenin's plan, the building of socialism was, in the main, completed in the Soviet Union by 1937. This achievement was legislatively recorded in the new Constitution of the USSR. It was a supreme triumph of the policy pursued by the Communist Party, and a triumph of the working class, the collectivefarm peasantry and all other working people. But this did not signify that the Lenin plan of building socialism had thereby been consummated. The Soviet Union had entered the period in which socialist construction was to be completed, but the war started by nazi Germany against the USSR cut short this peaceful work.
In dealing with the post-war period the Soviet press has not always clearly established the continuity with the processes that had taken place before the war. Sometimes, in connection with the criticism of the personality cult of Stalin, the colossal work accomplished by the Party and the Soviet people in building the material and technical basis of socialism, raising the standard of living and the people's cultural _-_-_
~^^*^^ On the Preparations for the Centenary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Decision of the CC CPSU, Moscow, 1968, Russ. ed., p. 14.
36 level, and in strengthening the country's defence capability has been indiscriminately run down. Some authors, without analysing the real state of affairs, alleged that the Soviet Union failed to take steps to strengthen its defence capability. Yet it was the huge economic and military potential, the enhanced political consciousness and cultural level of the people, the Party's able use of the advantages of the socialist system and of the reserves and potentialities of the Soviet Union that made it possible to defeat nazi Germany. Bourgeois falsificators go to all lengths to belittle the role played by the Soviet Union in defeating nazi Germany. But these attempts are doomed to failure. The entire coursje and outcome of the war and countless facts and documents testify to the decisive role played by the Soviet Union in the epochmaking victory won over nazi Germany. After the victory over the most rabid enemy of mankind---German nazism--- the Soviet Union healed most of the war wounds during the period of the fourth five-year plan and confidently forged ahead to complete the building of a mature socialist,society.Some authors, it must.be pointed out, do not display a clear understanding of the gradual development of this process. They do not adequately take into account Lenin's teaching of the complete and final triumph of socialism, of the gradual dialectical process of transition from socialism to communism. This transition proceeds gradually, chiefly through the steady enlargement and consolidation of the material and technical basis of socialism, which forms the initial foundation for the material and technical basis of communism. Moreover, this gradualness is expressed in the increasing participation of the people in socialist production, in the steady development of relations of mutual assistance, comradely support and exchange of experience, in the gradual erasure of the essential distinctions in the cultural level and standard of living of the town and countryside and the distinction between mental and physical labour, in strengthening the fraternal friendship between all nations.
Transition to communism was started in the Soviet Union after the complete and final triumph of socialism had been secured. In the Theses of the CC CPSU headed ``50th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution'', it is stated: ``The formation of the world socialist system, and the growth of the Soviet Union's economic and defence might brought about a change in the world balance of forces in 37 favour of socialism. Socialism has won once and for all in the USSR, and our country is fully guaranteed against the restoration of capitalism.''^^*^^ In the theses it is pointed out that the complete and final triumph of socialism is the principal result of the revolutionary-transformative work of the Soviet people headed by the Communist Party. But the shoots of the new, communist society appeared much earlier, in effect, in the very first days after the establishment of Soviet power. The Communist subbotniks (labour given freely on holidays or after working hours) were one of these shoots.
Elements of communism became manifest also in the socialist emulation movement. An enormous place is occupied in the emulation movement by the conscious desire to hasten socialism and communism by one's own labour contribution. Soviet people are voluntarily taking an increasingly more active part in the work of the Soviets and in furthering economic and cultural development.
Having completed the building of socialism and creating a highly developed socialist society, the Soviet Union entered the period of full-scale communist construction. Lenin's teaching of the two stages of communist society is being applied more fully and consistently. He wrote: ``... as we begin socialist reforms we must have a clear conception of the goal towards which these reforms are in the final analysis directed, that is, the creation of a communist society___"^^**^^ Currently, the Soviet people are working towards this goal.
The problems linked with the transition to the building of communism on the basis of the specific conditions of the development of Soviet society at the present stage were deliberated by the Party at the Twentieth and Twenty-First congresses, at the Twenty-Second Congress, which adopted a new Programme, at the Twenty-Third Congress and at plenary meetings of the Central Committee. The Party firmly adheres to the Leninist, scientific approach in defining the tasks involved in the building of the new society, finding the main link of the political leadership of the masses. Lenin's precept on this point was: ``Political events are always very confused and complicated. They can be compared _-_-_
~^^*^^ 50th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution pp. 24--25.
~^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 127.
38 with a chain. To hold the whole chain^ you must grasp the main link. Not a link chosen at random.''^^*^^The Programme of the CPSU states that at the present stage of communist construction the main link is the unity of three prime tasks of the Party and the Soviet people: the building and enlargement of the material and technical basis of communism, the creation of new social relations and the upbringing of the new man of communist society.
Of these three, the leading and determining task is the building of the material and technical basis of communism, i.e., further economic development. Lenin said that ``we value communism only when it is based on economic facts''.^^**^^
But economic development is indivisibly linked with the shaping of communist relations and the upbringing of the new man. Neither of these tasks may be belittled or counterposed to the other, and the various forms of development may not be hastened, if the conditions have not ripened for them. Guided by Lenin's propositions, the Party teaches that success can only be achieved if these tasks are carried out scientifically and parallel with each other in accordance with the concrete situation, with the obtaining political and economic conditions. In the Programme of the CPSU it is pointed out that these tasks can only be carried out under the leadership of the CPSU, the devoted and tested vanguard of the working class and the whole Soviet people.
In line with Lenin's propositions about the building of socialism and communism, and the Party's growing role in the period of communist construction as the directing and leading force of society, and improving the forms and methods of its organisational and educational work, the CPSU has embarked on large-scale and manifold activity to carry out the programme of building communism in the Soviet Union.
The Party concentrates chiefly on building the material and technical basis of the new society. All the reserves and potentialities of socialist production are to be used to cover the country with a network of power stations, give every scope to the scientific and technological revolution and, on that basis, develop machinery, technologies and the organisation of production in all branches of the national economy, comprehensively automate and mechanise production _-_-_
~^^*^^ Ibid., Vol. 33, p. 302.
~^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 29, p. 191.
39 processes, build a large chemical industry, promote the production of new forms of energy and new materials, make the fullest use of natural resources, and so on. In order to start the gradual transition to the communist principle of distribution according to needs there must be an abundance of products, the output of which must far outstrip the level reached by the most highly developed capitalist countries. But this target can only be achieved by mobilising all the creative forces of the people, the entire experience of socialist construction and all the means for the ideological education of the people. The Party has done much in this direction since the Twenty-Second Congress.After the CC plenary meeting in October 1964 the Party consistently ascertained and determined the priority tasks, acting in fulfilment of Lenin's teaching on the main link of political and economic leadership and in line with the Leninist principles of providing a scientific foundation for political and economic guidance. At its plenary meeting in March 1965 the CC CPSU scrutinised the cardinal problems of agricultural development in order to speed up the production of food for the population and raw materials for industry, and at another plenary meeting, in September 1965, it considered the question of higher efficiency in the management of industry, better planning and greater economic incentives in production.
The transfer of industrial enterprises to complete economic autonomy, as envisaged by the economic reform charted by the CC CPSU at its September 1965 plenary meeting, embodies the Leninist principles of socialist economic management applicable not only under socialism but also in the period of transition from socialism to communism. Economic factors such as profitableness, cost, price and income continue to play a major role in the work of enterprises as powerful levers for the further expansion of the Soviet economy.
The important economic measures taken by the Party are facilitating the successful fulfilmeut of the tasks that have been set the people in building the material and technical basis of communism. The data on the fulfilment of the seven-year plan convincingly show the steady advance in that direction. The national income used for accumulation and consumption grew 53 per cent, the volume of industrial output increased 84 per cent, while the basic funds of 40 the economy increased 92 per cent, i.e., they almost doubled. The Soviet Union's economic and defence potential at the commencement of the seven-year plan, a potential that took over 40 years (32 years if the period of wars is subtracted) to build, was thus doubled in only seven years. Such was the truly colossal contribution of the seven-year plan towards the building of the material and technical basis of communism.
Further progress was achieved in all fields of production during the years that followed. Speaking at the 1969 Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, L. I. Brezhnev pointed out that in the eight-year period from 1960 to 1968 industrial output in the USSR increased more than twofold and agricultural output nearly one-third. The gap separating the USSR from the USA in the economic sphere has narrowed down. In 1960 gross industrial output in the Soviet Union reached 55 per cent of the level in the USA, while in 1968 it rose to nearly 70 per cent of that level. The international prestige enjoyed by the Soviet Union and the whole socialist community has risen in recent years and its influence over the destinies of mankind has been enhanced.
The growth of the Soviet Union's social wealth ensures the steady rise of the people's standard of living and cultural level. The real wages of factory and office workers and the incomes of the collective farmers are growing and their material and cultural requirements are being satisfied more and more fully. The Party and the Government are taking steps to increase the minimum wage for factory and office workers, and to raise the rate of tariff for lower- and medium-paid employees. In recent years the income tax has been abolished or reduced for a large section of factory and office workers, and collective farmers have been guaranteed a minimum money payment and pensions; minimum pensions have been increased, and more benefits have been established for invalids of the Great Patriotic War. In the period from 1960 to 1968 the real incomes of the people increased 43 per cent. The housing situation is steadily improving. The housing available in the towns increased from 958 million square metres of useful floor space at the close of 1960 to 1,410 million square metres at the close of 1968.
Much is being done to improve towns and workers' townships and build more health and holiday homes, hospitals and polyclinics. The upbringing of Soviet children receives unflagging attention. The number of children in pre-school 41 establishments totalled nine million in 1968. In the 1968/69 school year there were more than 77,000,000 pupils and students at the general-education and vocational secondary schools and at institutions of higher learning. In the Soviet Union tuition is free at all educational institutions. Soviet science has registered new achievements and the number of scientists has continued to grow rapidly. In 1969 the Soviet Union had one-fourth of the world's scientists.
The work of Soviet scientists and engineers in space exploration, the development of quantum electronics, the physics of solids, the creation of polymeric and semi-conductor materials, the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes and many other fields has won world-wide recognition. Fine new works have been created by Soviet writers, artists and composers.
The economy and culture are developing successfully in all the Union republics. The great vital force of the Leninist national policy is demonstrating to the whole world that socialism alone opens for the peoples the road to the swift surmounting of economic and cultural backwardness and their conversion into advanced socialist nations. Translated into reality in the process of socialist construction, Lenin's teaching of the cultural revolution is being further developed and enriched in the present period of the building of communism.
In working on the tasks set by the Party for the period of communist construction on a broad front, the Soviet people have thus secured major achievements in economic and cultural development and in raising the standard of living. There has been considerable progress in building the material and technical basis of communism.
Socialist social relations in all spheres have been improved parallel with the development of the country's productive forces and with the enlargement of the material and technical basis. In the sphere of the relations of production, the forms of socialist ownership, both state and co-operative, are undergoing further evolution. Important developments were the eradication of subjectivism and voluntarism in planning and in the management of production, the massive intervention of science, a realistic account of the actual possibilities of industrial enterprises and collective and state farms, and the unfolding of creative initiative by the people. Scientific and technological progress in industry required a 42 further enhancement of the skill, initiative and efficiency of workers at all levels. New features have emerged in the attitude to labour. Along with personal incentive, collective incentives are steadily coming to the fore.
In the countryside, collective- and state-farm production plays the determining role in the development of social relations. In recent years there has been a trend towards reorganising many collective farms into state farms. The progress that has been made in collective-farm production, particularly after the plenary meeting of the CC CPSU in March 1965, has convincingly demonstrated the vitality of both the collective- and state-farm forms of organisation. The further development of collective-farm production and the extension of production ties between them allow for a more rational utilisation of natural, material, technical and labour resources and help to improve socialist relations of production in the countryside.
Important changes are taking place in the socio-political sphere. By ensuring the triumph of socialism in the USSR, the dictatorship of the proletariat fulfilled its historic mission. The function of suppressing the resistance of the exploiting classes disappeared with the liquidation of these classes, and the main functions of the socialist state---- economic, organisational, cultural and educational---have become predominant. With the triumph of socialism, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes the political organisation of the entire people. The people's state is the further development of the socialist state and through it is achieved the transition to communist self-administration. The people's state does not rule out the leading role of the working class. On the contrary, the working class continues to preserve its leading role also in the period of communist construction. This is natural because to this day the working class plays the chief role in production, by virtue of its involvement in industry, mainly in heavy industry, which retains its importance as the foundation for the development of the national economy as a whole and as the key factor in the building of the material and technical basis of communism. The working class remains the most advanced force of Soviet society on account of its rich revolutionary and labour traditions and vast organisational experience. Comprising more than half the country's working population, it is the most highly conscious and organised class.
43Vital importance attaches today to the comprehensive development and improvement of socialist democracy, calling for the increasingly more active participation of citizens in the administration of the state, in the guidance of state and cultural development, and in the measures to enhance the efficiency of the state apparatus and intensify public control of its work. At the same time, it would be wrong to forestall developments, prematurely replace socialist statehood with forms of communist self-administration or prematurely turn basic functions of the socialist state in internal and foreign policy over to public bodies. The task is to continue consolidating the socialist state and strengthening discipline, order and legality, and to improve and further develop socialist statehood and democracy.
The task of the public is to help the socialist state more and more actively to carry out its principal educational and organisational functions. It should also be borne in mind that in view of the existence of capitalist states and their growing aggressiveness, the socialist state bears an increasing responsibility for the defence of the USSR and of the socialist community as a whole and for the fulfilment of internationalist tasks relative to all countries fighting exploitation and working towards freedom, independence and socialism.
During the period of transition to communism an enhanced role is played by the Soviets, which are the all-embracing organisation of the people and embody their unity. The salient features of the Soviets of Working People's Deputies as organs of state power and as the largest public organisations combine organically in their work. In the process of the further development of socialist democracy the organs of state power will gradually evolve into organs of public self-administration. But this process will take place not as a result of a simple transfer of the functions of the Soviets as organs of state power to public self-administration, but as a result of the further development of the Leninist principle of democratic centralism, the correct combination of centralised leadership with the maximum promotion of the work of local organs of state power, the improvement of the forms of the people's government and the enhancement of the creative activity of the people. It is important that more millions of people should go through the school of state administration by taking part in the work of the Soviets. 44 Practice shows that Soviet people regard their voluntary participation in the work of the Soviets as one of their major duties. Several million people participate in this work; they help to strengthen state discipline and order, improve the organisation of public education, social maintenance, public health, trade and public catering, better the services and the work of cultural establishments and ensure the strict observance of socialist legality. This gives striking expression to the principle of socialist democracy.
The organs of public control are becoming steadily more active. During the early years of Soviet power Lenin said that the organs of public control had to function permanently as effective vehicles for drawing the people into the administration of affairs of state. In the period of gradual transition to communism these organs acquire increasingly more important functions. They help to check on the fulfilment of decisions by the Party and the Government, facilitate the growth of the socialist economy, further cultural progress, make sure that state discipline and socialist legality are observed and actively support new, advanced developments in the life of society.
New patriotic undertakings and new communist forms of labour are instituted on the initiative of many thousands of workers in socialist production. Emulation movements for high indices in communist labour at industrial enterprises and collective and state farms are started on a nation-wide scale. Designing and technological bureaus, economic analysis groups, technical rate-setting bureaus, councils of innovators and other voluntary services are being set up.
The trade unions play a growing role in communist construction. They help to fulfil state plans, introduce technical improvements in production and promote emulation movements and invention and rationalisation on a mass scale. They popularise the finest examples of a communist attitude to work and manifestations of communist social relations.
The Komsomol is prominent in furthering educational and organisational work among young people. Young volunteers work with dedication to build giant power stations, factories, railways and new towns, develop virgin land, explore outer space and help the Party to educate young people in the communist spirit.
All forms of co-operatives---collective farms, consumers', house-building and others---are playing an increasingly 45 larger role in communist construction and in the communist education of the masses.
The upbringing of the new man of communist society acquires immense importance in the period of transition to communism. The new man is moulded in the process of active participation in communist construction. Moreover, he is formed under the influence of the entire system of educational work by the Party, the Government and public organisations. The Party sets the task of giving all Soviet people a scientific world outlook on the basis of MarxismLeninism, a generalisation of new phenomena in the life of Soviet society, the experience of the world revolutionary and working-class movement, and the creative combination of the theory and practice of building communism. In educational work the Party attaches the utmost importance to the promotion of a communist attitude to labour creating the material and technical basis of communism.
As the building of communism progresses, increasing importance is acquired in the life of society by moral principles founded on the moral code of communist construction. The Party educates the people on the glorious revolutionary and labour traditions of the working class, on the example of the life and work of outstanding leaders of the CPSU and the international communist and working-class movement. The Party aims at the all-round development of the individual, who would harmoniously combine spiritual wealth, moral purity and physical perfection. The struggle against manifestations of bourgeois ideology and morals, survivals of private-ownership psychology, superstitions and prejudices, and the propagation of the great advantages of socialism and communism over the outworn capitalist system are components of the drive for communist education.
Another major step towards the attainment of the great aim of building communism in the USSR was the five-year plan for 1966--1970, the directives for which were adopted by the Twenty-Third Congress of the CPSU. This plan, which envisages a 40 per cent increase of the gross product, a growth of more than 50 per cent of the basic assets of production and a 38--41 per cent increase of the national income, will contribute greatly towards creating the material and technical basis of communism, raising the people's standard of living and cultural level and strengthening the country's defence capability. As in all the preceding years, the 46 leading role in developing production is played by heavy industry and electrification. At the same time, the gap between the growth rates of production of the means of production (Group ``A'') and of consumer goods (Group ``B'') is closing. The principal objective of socialist production is to secure the fullest and all-sided satisfaction of the people's requirements. With the growth of the material and technical basis of communism the output of consumer goods will be stepped up in order gradually to create the possibility for switching from the socialist to the communist principle of distribution. In the decisions of the Twenty-Third Party Congress and of plenary meetings of the CC CPSU the task of further developing the economy is organically combined with the promotion of new social relations, the upbringing of the new man of communist society and the intensification of ideological work. ``The main thing now,'' L. I. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CC CPSU, said in his report to the Twenty-Third Congress, ``is to raise the standard of all the sectors of the Party's ideological work still higher. We must remember Lenin's tenet that communist education is inconceivable outside the sphere of conscious labour and social activity. All ideological work must be closely associated with life, with the practice of communist construction.''^^*^^ To carry out the tasks set by the Twenty-Third Congress the role of the social sciences has to be enhanced to the utmost in communist construction and in the ideological education of the people. To this end a special decision was passed in August 1967.
In the period of communist construction, a bigger role than ever before is played by the CPSU, which with a membership of nearly 14 million is the leading and guiding force of Soviet society. This is due to the increased scale and complexity of the tasks involved in communist construction, the steadily rising creative activity of the masses, the drawing of new millions of people into the administration of the state and the management of production, the further development of socialist democracy and the enhancement of the role played by public organisations. The importance of the theory of scientific communism and of the communist education of the people is particularly pronounced in this period.
_-_-_~^^*^^ 23rd Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1966, p. 147.
47Guided by the tenets of Marxism-Leninism and creatively developing them, the Leninist Party confidently leads the Soviet people in the building of communism.
Communist construction in the USSR is lightened by the existence of the fraternal family of socialist states and by their assistance and support. In its turn, the USSR renders the other socialist countries invaluable assistance. The victory of socialist revolutions in a number of countries in Europe and Asia was facilitated by the Soviet Union's epochmaking victory over the then mightiest forces of world imperialism, by the very existence of the USSR and by its achievements and inspiring example. Had the Soviet Union not stood its ground in the life-and-death struggle against German nazism in 1941--1942 mankind's development might have been retarded by scores of years.
The Soviet Union did not allow the imperialists to interfere in the internal affairs of the socialist countries, prevented imperialist intervention and the export of counter-- revolution and thereby enabled the great majority of these countries to avoid civil war. Thanks to the disinterested assistance of the Soviet people, the young socialist countries quickly surmounted economic difficulties and began and successfully proceeded with socialist construction.
The Soviet Union shouldered a considerable part of the burden of creating a powerful system of defences to safeguard the socialist community, peace and the security of all nations, and the building of socialism and communism. The Soviet Union's missile-nuclear might is the fruit of gigantic efforts by the Party and the people. This might is a deterrent to the imperialist aggressors. Hans J. Morgenthau, a leading American expert in international problems, noted this fact and wrote that ``the United States cannot afford to wage an all-out atomic war because it cannot win such a war''.^^*^^
The world has entered a stage where its present and future depends more than ever before on the building of communism in the USSR and on socialist construction in the fraternal countries.
``The world socialist system,'' states the Main Document of the Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties held in Moscow on June 5-17, 1969, ``is the decisive force in the anti- _-_-_
~^^*^^ Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics in the Twentieth Century, Vol. Ill, Chicago, 1962, p. 140.
48 imperialist srtuggle. Each liberation struggle receives indispensable aid from the world socialist system, above all the Soviet Union.''^^*^^The extensive historical experience that has now been accumulated provides the most striking confirmation of one of Lenin's key tenets, namely, that the further development of the world socialist revolution depends directly on the successful fulfilment of the tasks of building the new, higher social system where the socialist revolution has been consummated. The building of communism in the USSR is of momentous international significance. Lenin prophetically said that ``our communist economic development will become a model for a future socialist Europe and Asia''.^^**^^ The development of the world socialist system daily provides confirmation of Lenin's forecast.
Soviet achievements arouse tremendous interest in the less developed countries, whose peoples stand before a choice of the road. The experience of fraternal co-operation between the USSR and the Mongolian People's Republic has shown the world that with Soviet assistance the developing countries can advance successfully along the road to socialism without passing through the stage of capitalist development. Today when the might of the USSR and the volume of its assistance have multiplied many times over, the possibility of noncapitalist development has become still more topical and feasible for the peoples of many countries. Small wonder that the number of countries building socialism is growing.
A feature of the contemporary world is that a number of developed capitalist states are seeking to shake off their bondage to the USA, a bondage disguised as military ``aid'' and formalised by aggressive military blocs. Objectively, national aspirations of this kind rely on the existence and role played by the Soviet Union and the world socialist system as a whole.
The immense growth of communism's prestige in the world and its impact on the minds of people derives from the Soviet successes in building the new society. Communism is winning new millions of adherents. Ezra Taft Benson, former US Secretary of Agriculture, said that ``never in _-_-_
~^^*^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow 1969, p. 21.
~^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 518.
__PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---2635 49 recorded history has any movement spread its power so far and so fast as has socialistic communism in the last three decades''.^^*^^The Soviet Union astonished the world by its achievements in all spheres of the economy and culture, and in major scientific researches. The American sociologist and journalist John Gunther notes that in no other country in the world is science so closely associated with society and with production.^^**^^
Parallel with all sorts of slanderous fabrications, bourgeois scientists have been compelled to admit the unprecedented rate of development in the USSR. The American scientist William Mandel writes that ``the USSR is the only country ever to industrialise without the aid of capital investment from abroad...''. This achievement, he adds, ``is greater still when the fantastic devastation of World War II is considered''.^^***^^
In the Soviet Union economic restoration proceeded much more quickly after the nazi invasion than after the intervention and the Civil War. This was due to the fact that the Soviet Union's economic and technical potential had grown incomparably during the pre-war years. The huge industrial centres built in the eastern regions during the period of the first five-year plans were the backbone not only of the country's defence (1,360 large industrial enterprises were evacuated to these regions during the war) but also of the post-war rehabilitation.
Truly spectacular results were achieved during the postwar rehabilitation and development of the socialist industry. In 1945, the year of victory over nazi Germany, the Soviet Union produced only 12 million tons of steel as against the US output of 75 million tons. In 1965 steel production totalled 91 million tons in the USSR and 121 million tons in the USA. In 1970 the USSR will produce 115 million tons of steel. The Soviet Union is thus coming close to the United States level of steel production. This industry remains the bedrock of the country's defence and of the further expansion of all branches of the national economy.
_-_-_~^^*^^ The Soviet System in Theory and Practice, ed. by Harry G. Shaffer, New York, 1965, p. 334.
~^^**^^ See John Gunther, Inside Russia Today, New York, 1962, p. 297.
~^^***^^ National Guardian, March 26, 1966, p. 6.
50A huge leap forward has been accomplished in the output of electric power, oil, gas, cement, coal, mineral fertilisers, tractors, sugar and leather footwear. The re-equipment of most branches of industry has been started.
__*_*_*__The achievements of communist construction in the USSR are indisputable. In the resolution adopted by the TwentyThird Congress of the CPSU on the CC report it is stated: ``The building of communism in the USSR and the all-sided improvement of Soviet socialist society are the basic contribution made by the CPSU and the entire Soviet people towards the world revolutionary process, towards the struggle of all peoples against imperialism, for peace, national independence, democracy and socialism.''^^*^^
The ``Left'' opportunists and the Chinese nationalists regard the building of socialism and communism as something outside the world revolutionary process. This shows their rupture with Marxism-Leninism and the petty-bourgeois substance of their views. Actually, as is demonstrated by obvious facts bearing out the conclusions of Marxist-Leninist theory, the creative work of the peoples of the socialist countries is an intrinsic part of the world revolutionary process. More, it is its decisive factor and mainstay.
By building communism the Soviet people fulfil their revolutionary, internationalist duty. Their dedicated work is powerfully influencing world development and the balance of forces between the two opposing social systems. The building of communism is a powerful lever for influencing the minds and hearts of millions of people in all countries and the development of world history. In competition with capitalism, the achievements of socialism facilitate and accelerate the world revolutionary process while being an inseparable part of it.
Even the most far-sighted bourgeois leaders have to admit today that a direct link exists between the successes of communism as a revolutionary force in the world and the economic, scientific and technological achievements in the USSR.
A noteworthy admission, for example, was made by the _-_-_
~^^*^^ 23rd Congress of the CPSU, p. 300.
51 United States Senator William J. Fulbright, who said that ``the success of communism as a revolutionary force in the world is ... the result of the impact and example of the Soviet state, which ... converted backward Russia into a powerful modern industrial society in the span of a single generation''.^^*^^The building of socialism and communism is the principal front of the present-day revolutionary class struggle and the main sector of the world revolutionary process. It constitutes the basic and decisive direction of the struggle between the two systems, and by moving in that direction the world socialist community, the Soviet Union above all, influence and will in future have an even more marked influence on the entire process of world revolution. ``The way things shape out in our country,'' L. I. Brezhnev said at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties in 1969, ``the successes in communist construction largely determine the scale and depth of the influence exerted by the Soviet Union's foreign policy on the international situation.''^^**^^ Hence, it follows that every working man and woman actively participating in communist construction in the Soviet Union is a genuine revolutionary, a direct participant in the great work of the revolutionary reorganisation of the world and a fighter of the great global army of the world socialist revolution.
Successful fulfilment of the new five-year plan is further convincing testimony of the fact that the Soviet people are steadfastly carrying out their internationalist duty to the working people of the fraternal socialist countries, the international proletariat and the world liberation movement.
The Soviet Union is safeguarding and augmenting its revolutionary moral and political strength, which has enabled it to stand its ground in the struggle against all hostile forces of the old world.
The Soviet Union's material, technological and economic might, which has grown immeasurably and continues to grow and today fully conforms to the majesty of the epochal tasks set by the October Revolution, now lies on the balance _-_-_
~^^*^^ William J. Fulbright, Prospects for the West, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963, pp. 4-5.
~^^**^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow 1969, pp. 169--70.
52 of history. The gap between the grandeur of the tasks and the material possibilities for building communism, which Lenin wrote about in 1922, has now been closed.Successful communist construction in the Soviet Union and the building of socialism in other socialist countries are a powerful magnet attracting the working people of all countries. By increasing the economic and defence might of their country, the Soviet people are striking telling revolutionary blows at imperialism and thereby lending powerful assistance and support to all revolutionary, anti-imperialist, liberation forces and movements.
Great Lenin's immortal teaching and the cause of the October Revolution, which ushered in the epoch of socialism and communism, are embodied in the impressive achievements of the Soviet people, in their drive to fulfil the creative plans of the Communist Party.
[53] __ALPHA_LVL1__ DEVELOPMENTF. V. Konstantinov
__NOTE__ Author(s) is (are) above LVL in original.Marxist-Leninist philosophy---dialectical and historical materialism as the general theoretical foundation of the Marxist-Leninist teaching---naturally, plays a crucial role in the contemporary ideological struggle. The fight for and against Leninism was started during Lenin's lifetime. But it acquired particularly acute forms after Lenin's death. The central issue was, of course, that of the ways and prospects of development in the Soviet Union and of the possibility of building socialism in the USSR when it was encircled by capitalist countries.
But this vast general problem contained a series of other problems: the ways and means of socialist industrialisation in, a country devastated by two wars; the problem of reorganising the scattered and backward peasant economy and turning it into a large-scale socialist co-operative economy; the problem of wiping out illiteracy, the problem of mastering the great cultural heritage of mankind; the problem of turning the USSR into a country with the most advanced socialist culture; the problem of preserving and consolidating the alliance between the workers and the peasants, an alliance that forms the political foundation of Soviet power; the problem of preserving and strengthening fraternal friendship among the numerous nations and nationalities inhabiting the USSR; the problem of how to direct these nations and nationalities to the road of successful socialist construction. After Lenin's death, the Soviet people and the Communist Party were confronted with these and numerous other challenging problems.
54In tackling political, economic, social, ideological and military problems, the Central Committee, the theoreticians and the Leninist Party as a whole successfully upheld Marxism-Leninism as an integral teaching. They fought for Marxist philosophy, for revolutionary dialectics, for the creative development and implementation of Lenin's teaching, combating the Right and ``Left'' revisionists, those who sought to revise the basic principles of Leninism, and the dogmatists who were unable to apply revolutionary dialectics and turned it into scholasticism.
For decades and particularly in our day, in spite of facts, the opponents of Marxism, of dialectical and historical materialism, have endeavoured to prove that Marxism is a teaching of the 19th century, that it has grown obsolete and runs counter to the conditions, facts and reality of the 20th century, and to modern natural science.
Actually, it is the bourgeois philosophical and sociological theories that in their totality contradict the facts, reality and character of our epoch.
Marxism-Leninism is the only philosophy that has withstood the test of time, the test of the great events of our epoch.
Hegel called philosophy an epoch set in thought. This definition is extraordinarily profound. Marx called philosophy the spiritual quintessence of the epoch. But far from every philosophy fits into this lofty category. Every philosophy is the child, the creation of its times, but not every philosophy mirrors the substance, character, content and soul of its epoch.
In the capitalist world there are today many different philosophical schools and trends, major and minor. Each in its own way reflects some aspect of 20th-century life. Mostly, this is a misinterpreted, distorted or one-sided reflection, a tendentious reflection sustained by the viewpoint of one social group or another.
Today the whole world has been set in motion. And throughout the world all thinking people recognise that ours is an epoch of revolution: revolution in science and technology, and political, social and national liberation revolutions. The whole of spiritual life in the world is in the grip of revolution. Throughout the capitalist world people are re-assessing values. Revolutionary ideas have invaded 55 all spheres of human life in Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa.
What philosophy most adequately reflected and continues to reflect this revolutionary character, this revolutionary spirit of our epoch? Perhaps various positivist schools and trends appealing to experience, facts and phenomena but denying philosophy the right to get to the bottom of phenomena, the objective laws of movement and development operating independently of man? These trends deny science and philosophy the right of prevision. But this is a bad philosophy, a poor and unreliable guide in ordinary times, let alone in an epoch of revolution, in an epoch of great historical changes. In capitalist society considerable influence is wielded by neothomism, a religious philosophy that seeks to integrate theology with science. This is a philosophy of the past, not of the present or the future. It cannot serve as the ideological banner of progressive social forces.
Existentialism, a subjectivistic philosophy, has a very large following in capitalist society, chiefly among a section of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. It comes forward under the banner of humanism and as its principal object of study it has selected man, the individual, regarding him abstractly, in isolation from the tasks and conditions that may lead to the individual's real emancipation from all forms of alienation, to genuine freedom. Existentialism is a pessimistic theory reflecting man's tragic destiny in the world of capitalism, in the world of alienated essences, of phenomena created by man and acting against him as a force alien and hostile to him.
Dialectical materialism, revolutionary dialectics is the only philosophy that adequately reflects the revolutionary character of the contemporary epoch. This philosophy is hostile to everything reactionary, conservative and outworn. It is an enemy of everything stagnant or fossilised. As the richest, most profound and comprehensive teaching of development in nature, society, thinking and cognition, materialist dialectics calls on people to move forward without resting content with what has been achieved. Dialectics requires a bold unearthing and settlement of the contradictions arising in life and in knowledge. It demands support for everything new, progressive and revolutionary against the old and outworn. Ultimately the new always vanquishes the old. Such is the inexorable law of development. As a method of 56 cognition and action, dialectics is critical and revolutionary by nature, by all its inner substance. It regards human knowledge as an everlasting, living, mighty, omnipotent and insuperable onward movement from ignorance to knowledge, from shallow to deeper knowledge, from relative and objective truth to absolute truth, never fully and completely achieving it. It whips up the human mind, keeping it from resting content with what has been achieved; it awakens a craving for more knowledge.
Revolutionary dialectics is opposed to dogmatism, bigotry, complacency in science, and to claims to the attainment of absolute knowledge. What other philosophy conforms to and reflects to such an extent the revolutionary, dynamic spirit and steady, onward sweep of 20th-century science?
Revolutionary dialectics is the only philosophy that places a reliable theoretical weapon in the hands of all the Marxist-Leninist Parties. That is why Lenin, the Party and its Central Committee have unremittingly devoted so much energy and attention to the further all-sided elaboration of dialectics as a science, as a theory of knowledge, as a method of revolutionary action. That is why Lenin and the Leninists have always been so earnest in combating all forms of metaphysics, dogmatism, eclecticism and sophism, all forms of subjectivist play in dialectics. In a philosophical work headed On the Significance of Militant Materialism Lenin wrote that the development of dialectics as a science had to be furthered creatively. He recommended publishing excerpts from the works of Hegel with accompanying examples from the dialectics of the development of modern capitalism.
As a means of enlarging on dialectical materialism and preventing idealism and positivism from filtering into theoretical natural science, Lenin recommended an alliance between Marxist philosophers and modern materialist natural scientists. This alliance, he wrote, was needed equally by modern naturalists and Marxist philosophers. ``It should be remembered,'' he pointed out, ``that the sharp upheaval which modern natural science is undergoing very often gives rise to reactionary philosophical schools and minor schools, trends and minor trends. Unless, therefore, the problems raised by the recent revolution in natural science are followed, and unless natural scientists are enlisted in the work 57 of a philosophical journal, militant materialism can be neither militant nor materialism.''^^*^^
After Lenin's death the development of philosophical thought in the USSR proceeded as a drive to carry out the tasks set by him.
Marxist philosophers devoted considerable time to a struggle against vulgar, mechanistic materialism, whose expounders included Lyubov Axelrod, I. Skvortsov-Stepanov, Alexander Varyash and A. K. Timiryazev. The principal expounder of mechanistic, anti-dialectical materialism was Nikolai Bukharin with his theory of equilibrium. For the Right opportunists this theory served as the philosophical foundation of their economic and political programme, as the philosophical basis for their theory of spontaneity, of spontaneous development. In philosophy and politics the struggle against mechanism naturally grew extremely acute. Crowded meetings at which heated debates took place and dialectics, Marxist philosophical materialism, was upheld in a struggle against simplified, vulgar materialism, were held in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Kiev and other cities. Marxist philosophical cadres grew, formed and became steeled in this tense situation. This struggle of Marxist philosophers against mechanism was reflected in extensive literature dealing with purely philosophical and sociological problems and with problems of the struggle against simplified, vulgar, anti-dialectical views in physics, chemistry, biology, political economy, historical science, literary criticism and aesthetics. Much was contributed to this struggle by the journal Pod znamenem marksizma {Under the Banner of Marxism], which carried articles devoted to philosophical problems of natural science. The alliance between Marxist philosophers and representatives of modern natural science was achieved and strengthened. The journal printed articles on problems of dialectics. But towards the beginning of the 1930s (in some cases even earlier) serious errors and distortions came to light in the work of the journal and in the school of A. M. Deborin, who headed the journal. Regrettably, the editors failed to cope with the task recommended by Lenin ---that of giving a materialistic interpretation of Hegel's dialectics. On many issues they erased the border-line between the idealistic dialectics of Hegel and the materialistic _-_-_
~^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp. 232--33.
58 dialectics of Marx. This was the weak point of the Deborin school in the struggle against mechanistic materialism. A most serious retreat from the principles of materialism by the journal's editors was that they divorced philosophical theory from practice, from politics^But the main failing of Deborin and his school was that in a number of works they belittled Lenin's contribution to the development of Marxist philosophy, overlooking the fact that Lenin had raised Marxist philosophy to a new, higher level.
When the adversaries of Marxism assert that Marxism which was evolved a hundred years ago is obsolete, they deliberately ignore the fact that in our 20th century the teaching and philosophy of Marx were all-sidedly developed by Lenin. Marxism has never been and cannot be stagnant. The struggle for Leninism in the sphere of philosophy has been part and parcel of the Party's general struggle to achieve socialism, to mobilise all forces and means to attain the greatest objective after the October Socialist Revolution. This struggle demanded a herculean effort from the working class, the working peasantry, the Soviet intelligentsia, the Soviet Government and the Communist Party, which is the collective leader and inspirer of the Soviet people. In this struggle, in this advance along unexplored paths the Soviet people and the Communist Party were pioneers. And this great work, this unparalleled feat of building a new society, would have been inconceivable without the creative application and development of Marxist-Leninist theory, Marxist philosophy and, in particular, materialistic dialectics.
Our ill-wishers abroad are the only people who are so blind as to speak and write of the stagnation of theoretical thought in the USSR in the period of socialist construction, during the grim years of struggle against the capitalist encirclement and during the years of the life-and-death struggle with nazism. It would be hard to list all the great, pressing political and theoretical problems that arose every year, every month, at every abrupt turn in history. It would be hard to list all the contradictions and difficulties that we had to surmount in practice by applying -theory, revolutionary dialectics.
After Lenin's death some mistakes were made in the course of socialist construction. The personality cult damaged the development of 59 Marxist theory and philosophy. It fettered theoretical thinking, pushing it into dogmatism and reducing it to commentary. The Leninist Party and the Soviet people found in themselves the strength to surmount this phenomenon. Theoretical thought, including philosophy, cannot be stopped. Life, the practice of socialist construction and the extremely complex international situation demanded repeated analyses of events and the situation, and theoretical answers to new problems. These answers were furnished chiefly by the Party, by its Central Committee and theoretical cadres.
Is it possible to build socialism in one country taken separately? The theoretical answer to this question was furnished by Lenin. He formulated and theoretically substantiated the ways and means of fulfilling this task. His plan called for industrialisation, electrification and collectivisation. But in carrying out Lenin's plan the Party and the people encountered innumerable perplexing difficulties and innumerable enemies.
The Party and its theoretical cadres, philosophers among them, surmounted these difficulties. Perhaps, there was a better way of achieving this, with fewer sacrifices. But we were the pioneers and had no models, no historical examples to