5

p By P. N. FEDOSEYEV

p Lenin, the continuator of Marx, was a truly great thinker, revolutionary, and theoretician of communism.

p The teachings of Marx, Engcls and Lenin are as indispensable to the revolutionary transformation of society and to the guidance of social processes as the natural sciences are to the transformation of nature and to the development of industry and agriculture.

p Like any science, Marxism-Leninism is based on our knowledge of the laws of development of the surrounding world. Lenin amplified materialist dialectics, the science of the most general laws of the development of nature, human society and thought. In applying the dialectical method to the cognition of social processes he enriched Marxism with an understanding of new phenomena of historical reality. The laws and the social motive forces of the new epoch that he revealed still determine the development of society in the present day.

p Subjecting all historical facts to detailed study, drawing bold theoretical generalisations and perceiving the continuity between past, present and future, the Marxist-Leninist dialectical method transcends the narrow bounds of both empiricism and abstract rationalism.

p Since the time when Marx and Engcls lived the world has seen many major social changes, and the theoretical ideas of Marxism have been enriched accordingly.

p It is just the same with the physical sciences, or with chemistry and biology. Scientific concepts have changed enormously over the past hundred years. Recall how firmly igth-century physics and chemistry were based on the idea that atoms were the ultimate, indivisible units of matter. Again, the idea of the cell 6 as the basic unit of the organism was regarded as the major achievement of biology in the last century. The development of natural science has shown how limited these concepts are: science is penetrating ever more deeply into the structure of organic and inorganic matter, disclosing the extremely intricate composition of the atom and the organic cell.

p It is indeed amazing that the principles formulated by Marx and Engels in the ipth century should have proved valid and viable in the 2oth century. The dialectical conception of development, the materialist approach to history, the theory of surplus value, and the doctrine of the revolutionary transformation of society—all these are as effective a part of the fighting equipment of Communists today as ever.

p Lenin developed and enriched Marxism by basing himself on the main propositions of the teachings of Marx and Engels. That is why we say that there is a dialectical continuity between Marxism and Leninism and that Leninism is a new stage of Marxism, Marxism of the modern age. It is nonsense, therefore, to oppose Lenin to Marx and Leninism to Marxism, as some bourgeois and revisionist ideologists do.

p An acute struggle centres around the ideas of Marx and Lenin, in which different class and party standpoints arc reflected.

p Millions upon millions of people in different countries and continents are attracted to socialism; this in itself speaks of its great influence and growing appeal. Some people would combine Marxism with Christianity to produce so-called Christian socialism; others see a likeness between the views of Marx and Confucius; still others find there is such a thing as “Muslim Marxism”. But however different such interpretations are— connected as they may be with the most diverse, often anti- proletarian, social forces—and however one-sided and distorted an account of the enormous spread of Marxism they represent— nothing can detract from its universal appeal, nor deny the undeniable fact that the influence of Marxism keeps growing.

p Marxism-Leninism is a single international doctrine—its distortions alone arc numerous. One can mention several varieties of revisionism presuming to “renew” Marxism, to adapt it to purely national circumstances.

p Every Communist Party considers it its duty to apply Marxism- Leninism creatively to its country’s concrete conditions, to enrich revolutionary theory. But it is one thing to develop scientific communism with reference to the special features of this or that country, and quite another to replace the main principles 7 of Marxism-Leninism by opportunist conceptions, whether from the right or the left.

p We know that numerous attempts arc made to present revisionist trends as different varieties of Marxism. But it is clear that Marxists-Leninists must resolutely reject all ideas of pluralism, of different varieties of Marxism. Marxism is not to be divided according to geography or national affinity. Marxism is an integral revolutionary doctrine, cast, as it were, from a single block of steel.

p Those of our ideological opponents who seek to divide revolutionary theory into national compartments claim that Leninism is a purely Russian development, a generalisation of Russian experience alone, which makes it inapplicable to other countries. Such an understanding of Lenin’s teachings is completely divorced from the facts. Just as Marxism, which originated in Germany, was not a theoretical generalisation exclusively of German reality, so Leninism, which originated in Russia, is not an exclusively Russian phenomenon, but a higher stage of Marxism.

p Lenin synthesised the experience of three Russian revolutions and that of the initial years of building socialism in the Soviet Republic—itself of enormous international significance. The 1905 Revolution, the first in the epoch of imperialism, furnished a model of popular revolution—bourgeois-democratic in its socio- economic content but proletarian inasmuch as it was motivated and led by the working class. The brief historical period between the February and October revolutions of 1917 was the first successful example of a bourgeois-democratic revolution developing into a socialist one. The October Revolution marked a great turning point in the history of mankind and ushered in the epoch of the transition from capitalism to socialism on a world scale.

p This historic movement for the revolutionary transformation of society proceeded under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party with Lenin at its head. Lenin solved the basic theoretical problems that arose in the course of three Russian revolutions and during the transition to the building of socialism in the young Soviet Republic. At the same time he generalised the experience of the international workers’ movement and the achievements of scientific thought after Marx and Engels. He amplified and developed further all the aspects and component parts of Marxism—philosophy, political economy and scientific communism—and these do not and cannot belong to any one nation but to the whole of progressive mankind. This is what gives Leninism its universal, international significance. Clearly there can be 8 no specifically Russian, Chinese or Yugoslav dialectics or theory of revolution. The general laws of historical development extend to all countries alike. To set some sort of local limits to Leninism, or to believe it to be merely one variant of Marxism, is to ignore the essential international content of Marxism-Leninism as the one comprehensive scientific world outlook of the working class.

p Under present-day conditions Marxism-Leninism plays its great progressive part in the destinies of nations while being constantly renewed and enriched by current social practice, which it continually subjects to analysis. The triumph of socialism and the building of a communist society in the Soviet Union, the establishment and development of the world socialist system, the collapse of imperialism’s colonial system, the aggravation of the general crisis of imperialism, and the scientific and technical revolutions of the loth century together form the basis for developing Marxism-Leninism by collective effort.

p The greatest contribution to the development of Marxist- Leninist theory has been made by the Party that Lenin founded, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After being at the helm of a socialist society for fifty years, the CPSU has accumulated immense theoretical and practical experience and has enriched Leninism with new theoretical conclusions and propositions of historic significance not only to the Soviet Union but to all mankind.

p The progress of the world communist movement shows that Leninism is being enriched and enhanced by the revolutionary experience and combined theoretical knowledge of all Communist and Workers’ Parties. Today, when the centenary of Lenin’s birth is being celebrated, the significance of Lenin’s ideas, of Leninist theory and practice, for the future of mankind, stands out ever more clearly.

p “All the experience of world socialism and of the workingclass and national liberation movements has confirmed the world significance of Marxist-Leninist teaching,” as is stated in the Address "Centenary of Lenin’s Birth”, adopted by the Moscow Meeting of the Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1969.

p Leninism is the determined opponent of revisionism, of everything conducive to the unwarranted revision of truths confirmed by practice. Yet Lenin did not believe Marxism to be immutable and inviolable. It would be foolish to regard Marxism as a hoard of ideas kept locked up in a strong-box, to gloat over and to dip into on occasion.

p But it is equally ill-advised to regard Marxism as a kind of 9 wide-open box into which one can deposit no matter what odds and ends of various ideological trends, bourgeois-liberal and revisionist among them, for the purpose of “enriching” Marxism. Some “wiseacres”, too, try to “replenish”, or rather, to “replace” Marxist-Leninist theory by Trotskyist, anarchist, nationalist and other adventuristic notions.

p Marxism-Leninism has no pretensions to omniscience. As an ever-living, organically developing teaching, it can be likened neither to a locked nor to an open depository but rather to a majestic tree which shoots new branches every year and rises taller and taller, so that ever more distant vistas can be surveyed from its top.

Dialectics, the principle of perpetual change and development, is the soul of Marxist-Leninist theory. The strictly scientific approach, the constant concern for bringing theory into line with social practice, the tireless effort both to reflect the present correctly and, on the strength of an accurate knowledge of reality, to be able to see into the future—all this forms the source of the invincible strength of Leninism and its immense impact on human progress.

p Lenin became the theoretician and leader of the liberation movement of a new era, the era of socialist revolutions, of society’s transition from capitalism to socialism and communism. By examining in detail the vital needs of the practical movement he developed further Marx’s theory of the class struggle and the socialist revolution. The problems of the socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat occupy a major place in his theoretical legacy. Basing himself on the changed historical conditions Lenin enriched and made concrete Marxist teachings on the motive forces of the socialist revolution, on the alliance of the working class with the peasantry and other non-proletarian sections of the working people, and on the necessary link between the socialist revolution and the national liberation movement. His ideas on the objective and subjective factors, on the relation of democratic to socialist goals, on the creation of the socio-political forces of the revolution, and on the role of the working class as the leader of both the democratic and the socialist revolutions have all greatly contributed to revolutionary theory.

p Lenin observed and analysed the increasing role of the party of the working class in bringing about the triumph of the socialist revolution and in building the new society. To build up the 10 Communist Parties was one of Lenin’s major behests to the world communist movement.

p Lenin’s most important achievements were his discovery of the possibility of socialism attaining victory in at first only one or a few countries, and his logical definition of the modern historical era as one of struggle between two antagonistic systems—socialism and capitalism. After analysing the special features of the age of imperialism, above all the law of the uneven economic and political development of capitalism, Lenin concluded that the contradictions of the capitalist system were intensifying, but that the preconditions for the socialist revolution would not mature at the same time in all countries; from which it followed that it would be possible to break the chain of imperialism at its weakest link. Again and again, when we turn to these now widely known propositions of Lenin’s, we see his brilliant insight into the future of Russia and into the essence of the current era of world history.

p At the beginning of the First World War Lenin clearly envisaged the coming division of the world into two opposing systems, and the struggle between them, following the triumph of socialism in one country. He wrote in August 1915: “After expropriating the capitalists and organising its own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will rise against the rest of the world—the capitalist world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states.”  [10•1 

p A year later Lenin again wrote: ”. . . socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie.”  [10•2 

p These words no longer merely represent a scientific forecast. The victory of the October Revolution confirmed the possibility of socialism achieving victory first in one country, as well as the 11 need to defend the gains of socialism by armed force. During the period of civil war and armed foreign intervention in Soviet Russia the struggle between the two social systems manifested itself with particular force. The young Soviet Republic not only had to engage in a life-and-death struggle with home counter- revolution but it also had to beat off the onslaught of fourteen bourgeois states.

p While Lenin advocated the principle of peaceful coexistence between states with different social systems, he repeatedly stressed that it was always necessary to be vigilant and ready to repulse imperialist aggression. He understood peaceful coexistence as something necessary and possible, but not as something already accomplished and guaranteed by the immutable laws of history. He explained over and again that the whole world situation was determined by the struggle between the Soviet republics and the imperialist states opposing them.

p The assault of nazi Germany and its satellites on the USSR, and the heroic struggle of the Soviet peoples against fascist aggression, showed how far-sighted Lenin had been in warning of the coming class battles in the international arena. By engaging in a just war for its own freedom and independence and by routing the nazi invaders the Soviet Union helped the peoples of some other countries to throw off the foreign yoke and, furthermore, to rid themselves of their native exploiters so as to embark on the path of socialist development.

p Thus Lenin’s theory of socialist revolution docs much more than simply deal with the questions connected with the triumph of socialism in one country; it is a general and comprehensive theory of the whole world revolutionary process, of the world victory of socialism over capitalism.

p By applying the dialectical method to the analysis of capitalism Marx was the first to expose the root contradictions of bourgeois society, which find their expression in the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between the exploiting classes and the exploited mass of the people. Lenin carried forward this analysis with reference to the imperialist stage of capitalism and the new historical epoch that dated from the October Revolution. He disclosed the contradictions between socialism and capitalism on a world scale. The struggle between the two systems is a specific expression of the dialectical law of the struggle of opposites in the international arena.

p The experience of the initial period of building socialism enabled Lenin to disclose the dialectics of the new society, whose 12 distinctive feature he saw in the fact that under socialism antagonisms disappear while contradictions persist. The law of the unity and struggle of opposites lies at the heart of dialectics, and Lenin uncovered the finest interconnections and interrelations of the main social forces of the modern age. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the world communist movement arc consistently following Lenin’s precepts in this respect and developing them.

p It is, however, different with the Chinese leaders, who have estranged themselves from Marxism-Leninism.

p Peking propagandists do not divide the world into two socio- political systems, two camps, but into East and West generally into “world town" and “world country”, ignoring the fundamental differences between the socialist and capitalist countries. Moreover, they are spreading monstrous slanders about “ American-Soviet collusion against the Chinese people and other revolutionary peoples”, despite the fact that history has shown, and all the peoples of the world recognise, that the Soviet Union is the main force in the fight against world imperialism and its bulwark, US imperialism.

p Contrary to the Chinese splitters’ giddy imaginings the world communist movement starts from the fact that world development is today determined by the struggle between two camps, two opposing systems. To recognise that this struggle is the pivot of the present era is in no way to underrate the world-wide historical significance of the class struggle of the proletariat and its allies in the capitalist countries or of the national liberation movements. We arc aware that the victory of socialism on a world scale is unthinkable in the absence of an alliance of the revolutionary forces of modern times. We merely wish to emphasise that the world socialist system opposing imperialism is the chief force and mainstay of the peoples’ anti-imperialist front.

p Revisionists describe the two camps as ordinary military blocs, claiming that the division into camps is an artificial “political bloc" situation which can be disposed of by a policy of “ nonalignment" and “convergence”, thus refusing to recognise the historical reality of the class struggle. But the two camps into which the present-day world is divided are not merely rival coalitions but two entirely different socio-economic formations: the outgoing, capitalist formation, and the rising, communist formation. When pointing out the world-historic significance of the Soviet system in 1920, Lenin said: “Two camps arc now quite consciously facing each other all over the world; this may be said without the 13 slightest exaggeration."  [13•1  A year later he reaffirmed: ”. . .the world has broken up into two camps: capitalism abroad and Communist Russia."  [13•2 

p The existence of the world socialist system and the increasing economic and defence potential of the socialist countries, especially the Soviet Union, are making the socialist camp a decisive factor in world politics and world development.

p In terms of world history, the question of which side will win is settled in favour of socialism. However, this is being decided in the course of a tense world-wide struggle between the two systems, between the forces of socialism and progress and those of imperialism and reaction. The imperialists still hope to defeat socialism and counterattack where they can. That is why it is impermissible and dangerous to treat any of their stratagems with complacency, and why it is necessary to wage a relentless struggle against the imperialist camp.

p In the period of transition from capitalism to socialism a fierce battle between the working class and the remnants of the exploiting classes is inevitable in every country. Even after the foundations of socialism have been laid, anti-socialist forces continue to resist socialist developments in one way or another. This contradiction between the forces of socialism and reaction is bound up with the struggle between the two systems on an international scale.

p In this connection the 1968-69 developments in Czechoslovakia amply confirm the Marxist theory of class struggle today. These developments should not be isolated from the international situation or viewed in separation from the struggle between the two social systems; they are but an instance of the general struggle between socialism and capitalism.

p The struggle between the two systems is most stark today in Vietnam, where US imperialists are waging a criminal war, and in the Middle East where armed aggression has also been unleashed against progressive regimes. Things are different in Europe, where imperialists avoid overt and direct armed action, trying instead to undermine the socialist countries by sabotage in a “democratic” guise. Here they have to face the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Treaty countries, and they do not dare to interfere in their affairs by force of arms as they do in Vietnam— which has no common frontier with the USSR but borders on 14 China, the position of whose leaders is being exploited by imperialism in order to disrupt the unit) of the revolutionary forces.

p In the class struggle both within individual countries and on the international scene there inevitably appear some elements that vacillate between the two camps. Lenin warned that in a world divided into two systems not only individuals and social groups but entire nations might vacillate between the socialist camp and imperialism.  [14•1 

p Sharply criticising unprincipled leaders, Lenin recommended a restrained and flexible attitude towards wavering social and political groups with a view to either neutralising them or winning them over. He said: “The main task we set ourselves is to defeat the exploiters and to win to our side the waverers—this is a task of historic significance."  [14•2 

p Experience has shown that no small proportion of the petty- bourgeoisie vacillates between socialism and capitalism. In Czechoslovakia, the anti-socialist forces would not have been so dangerous if they had not been able to rely on such wavcrers. That is why it is so important to oppose vacillation and to isolate the anti-socialist forces now.

p It should be borne in mind that wavering petty-bourgeois sections of the population and the national bourgeoisie exert a great influence on the balance of class forces in the developing countries. The reactionary military coups recently engineered in some of these countries by the US imperialists and their accomplices were supported by domestic reaction and the wavering intermediate strata of society. This goes to prove that the developing countries can follow the socialist road only in close alliance with the socialist countries, and that in order to advance along that road they must put an end to the vacillations of these intermediate strata. This in turn requires that the exposure of reformism, social-democracy and revisionism, whether Right- or Left-wing, be intensified on a world scale.

p Imperialism resorts to various methods of struggle against socialism and the national liberation movement. Nevertheless the confrontation of the two social systems in the world arena remains the basis of the class struggle. To support socialism and actively to defend it from aggression and imperialist encroachments is the internationalist duty of the Communists of all countries.

15

p Lenin attached overriding importance to the economic achievements of socialism in the struggle between the two world systems. Depending on the situation, the imperialists stake their hopes now on military, now on political and ideological forms of struggle, but in the long run the economy remains the main field of battle.

p Economic competition between the two social systems— socialism and capitalism—is one of the forms of the class struggle in the international arena, a law of our age under the conditions of the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems. Each major victory of socialism on the economic front speeds up the process of mankind’s transition from capitalism to socialism and communism, affects the methods and means of the struggle of the working class in the capitalist countries and the prospects of the national liberation movement.

p After it has triumphed over its exploiters politically, the proletariat must then demonstrate the advantages of socialist organisation in the economic sphere, too. Lenin said: “This is a task of world-wide significance. To achieve the second half of the victory in the international sense, we must accomplish the second half of the task, that which bears upon economic construction."  [15•1 

p The transformation of capitalist relationships into socialist ones takes a considerable historical period of time. Lenin worked out in detail Party policy for that pcriod—the New Economic Policy, or NEP, which signified the passing over from War Communism in the Soviet Republic to a peacetime economy, from the surplus-appropriation system to tax in kind. Lenin took into account the situation in Russia at that time, the peculiar circumstances that did not exist—nor need they necessarily arise— in other countries. On the whole, however, NEP remains of international import, since it reflects the principal regularities of the transition from capitalism to socialism that have proved to be common to all countries and facilitates the evolution of forms of alliance between workers and peasants. Lenin proved scientifically that in the process of building and expanding the socialist economy the proletarian state must make use of commodity production, trade and money.

p Lenin regarded the establishment of the material and technical basis of socialism as being of top priority, and added that any socialist country could succeed in this task thanks to the superiority of the socialist economic system. Lenin believed the socialist 16 system, expressing the interests of the broadest mass of the people, to be far superior to any state-monopoly economic organisation catering to the interests of a handful of capitalists.

p Lenin was the initiator of the plan for the electrification of the young Soviet Republic, of the radical industrial transformation of old Russia, of socialist industrialisation involving the most recent developments in technology.

p Creating the material and technical basis of communism means above all else building a large-scale heavy industry. Without this, Lenin said, "we shall never be able to build socialism and communism".  [16•1  Setting up large-scale production on the basis of electrification is the first important step on the road to communist economic organisation. Establishing the material and technical basis of socialism and then of communism was to Lenin the prerequisite for achieving the highest labour productivity in the world and for solving the task of overtaking and outstripping the advanced capitalist countries economically.

p Lenin also considered the establishment of heavy industry to be the first step and the basis for the socialist reorganisation of agriculture, the major condition for eliminating the economic roots of capitalism in the countryside and enabling small peasants to take up large-scale collective farming.

p Lenin worked out an agrarian programme that applied not only to his own country but to other countries of the world as well. His programme takes account of the special features of countries where small-scale production predominates, and formulates the general laws to which the socialist reorganisations of the countryside are subject. The methods of socialising production that he suggested encourage the enlistment of nonproletarian sections of the working people in the cause of building socialism, strengthen the alliance of workers and peasants and create the socio-economic basis for re-educating all working people in the spirit of socialism.

p Lenin recognised the leading role of national state enterprises in the economy. This is the corollary of the fact that the working class is the most advanced and organised class in socialist society, that it plays the leading role and is connected with the state, or public form of ownership. Having implemented Lenin’s ideas on the socialisation of production and established the material and technical basis of socialism, the Soviet Union, in the course of its pre-war five-year plans of economic 17 development, left behind all the European capitalist countries and took second place in the world—next only to the United Statcs—in industrial potential and the absolute volume of industrial production.

p Now that the Soviet Union has a strong and versatile socialist economy and is engaged in building the material and technical basis of communism, scientific and technological progress has become the main aspect of socialist construction. The most effective utilisation of scientific and technological achievements is the key to success in the economic competition between the two systems. For this reason, accelerating the rate of technological progress was given as one of the principal tasks of economic development by the 23rd Congress of the CPSU.

Leninism provides a comprehensive generalisation of the regularities of socialist development and the transition to communism. As Lenin pointed out time and again, socialism is a real movement of the people that must inevitably lead to communism. But communism can be built only on the basis of a fully fledged socialism, and only Leninism makes it possible to arrive at correct solutions to the cardinal problems of socialist construction, the tasks of achieving further economic development, scientific control of socialist processes, higher labour productivity and more efficient social production.

p Bourgeois democracy and socialist democracy are two qualitatively different political forms representing two different and opposite socio-economic systems. In fighting socialism, bourgeois ideologists habitually invoke the idea of democracy, exploiting in particular the notions of “pure” democracy and the freedom of the individual. They seek to prove that socialism is incompatible with democracy, while covering up the ever more reactionary character of the political regimes in the countries of the capitalist world. They arc supported in this by every kind of revisionists and nationalists. That is why it is so important to have a correct understanding of the essence of socialist democracy, of its principles and its fundamental difference from bourgeois democracy.

p In our appraisal and criticism of bourgeois democracy we should begin with the following definition of Lenin’s: "Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a 18 paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor."  [18•1 

p Bourgeois theorists gloss over the class nature of democracy by speaking of "democracy in general”, or "total democracy”. They must needs be hypocritical and give the title of " government by the whole people" and "pure democracy" to what is in effect a bourgeois dictatorship, a dictatorship of exploiters. Marxists-Leninists expose this falsehood, explaining to the people that the only way to free labour from the capitalist yoke is to replace this bourgeois dictatorship by the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, true democracy for the working people. Bourgeois society and its democracy protect the interests of the exploiters. The dictatorship of the proletariat, in defending the gains of the revolution, suppresses the resistance of the bourgeoisie; the socialist state of the whole people will not tolerate any actions directed against the interests of the working people, against the socialist system.

p Lenin severely criticised those who ventured so much as to hint at somehow adjusting the political organisation of the socialist state to bourgeois society or at making any concessions in that direction.

p Once Georgi Chicherin, the then Soviet People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, proposed something of that kind to Lenin. He wrote to him on January 20, 1922: "Dear Vladimir Ilyich, in case the Americans do press their demand for representative institutions, would you think it at all possible,  [18•2  for a proper compensation, to introduce into our Constitution a small amendment —quite significant in terms of ideology and principle but nothing to speak of in practical terms—to the effect that parasitic elements, too, should be represented in the Soviets, through their separate meetings? Alongside the election meeting of the workers of a particular factory or the Red Army men of a particular unit the parasites will also hold their election meeting and have two or three representatives against the 200 members of the Soviet."  [18•3 

p Chicherin’s suggestion found no favour with Lenin. On January 23, 1922, he wrote to the members of the Politbureau:

p "I have just received two letters from Chicherin (dated the 2oth and 22nd). He has raised the question of whether we should 19 agree, for a proper compensation, to some small changes in our Constitution, namely, representation for the parasitic elements on the Soviets. He says this should be done to please the Americans.

p "This proposal of Chicherin shows, I believe, that he should ... be immediately sent to a sanatorium, as any connivance in this respect, any allowance of delay, etc., will, in my opinion, be the greatest threat to all negotiations."  [19•1 

p This example is vivid enough proof of Lenin’s principled and uncompromising stand on the inadmissibility of any surrender of the principles of socialist democracy.

p As regards the political organisation of society, Lenin taught Communists to see the essential difference between bourgeois democracy and socialist democracy. It would be nai’ve to think that socialist democracy is the same democracy as exists under capitalism, only modified or “improved”. It would be still more absurd to suppose that one can mechanically transfer the attributes of bourgeois democracy to socialist society. But this is precisely what the social-democratic and revisionist critics of socialism advise Communists to do. Bourgeois democracy fails to give the people the most important thing—the right to make the major economic and political decisions, to be the master of their own destiny. Under bourgeois democracy a country’s home and foreign policies are in the hands of a few millionaires and multi- millionaires who own all the principal means of producing material and cultural benefits. The trimmings change, the forms of government alter, the ruling parties come and go, but the omnipotent moneybags stay.

p Socialism is a socio-economic system which, by abolishing private ownership of the means of production, generates a democracy of a new kind. In the Soviet Union, the fullest expression of socialist democracy is to be found in the Soviets as bodies of administration and economic management. Under socialism democracy develops in an essentially different direction to that under capitalism. It does not express itself in parliamentary debates, nor in pretty phrases about human rights, but in the practical implementation of freedom for the working people, in their real participation in the control of social processes for their own benefit.

p According to Marxism-Leninism, the foremost freedom is the freedom of the working people from exploitation. The democratic 20 character of socialism manifests itself primarily in the socialist relations of production, the main aim of which is to see that all the material goods produced by the people go to the people, and to the people alone. Therefore the basis of democracy, as Lenin repeatedly stressed, is not political phraseology but economic reality; Communists gauge the real worth of democracy by what it actually provides for the people in terms of economic and spiritual benefits.

p Socialist revolutions sweep away the class barriers that exploiters put up to prevent the introduction of democracy. The socialist countries turned over to the working people the means they needed to implement democratic rights from the very start. The socialisation of the instruments and means of production, their becoming the property of the whole people, and the handing over to the workers of the press, radio, TV, cultural institutions and educational establishments has produced a qualitative change in the nature of democracy—both production and public affairs arc now managed by the people, not by property owners.

p The democratic principles of socialism have become part and parcel of daily life in the Soviet Union, and their implementation a universal habit. To the millions of unemployed in the capitalist countries the right to work is but an idle dream, while for Soviet people it is the normal thing. Socialism has given everybody equal rights of access to the benefits of culture. The cultural revolution has indeed brought education and the achievements of science, literature and art within the reach of working people, and it has given wide scope to amateur talent and initiative. Culture is no longer the privilege of an “elite”, of a "chosen few”, but is accessible to the widest sections of people. This is one of the greatest achievements of socialist democracy.

p Now that the exploitation of man by man has been done away with, it has become possible to solve such an historic question of democracy as the abolishing of national oppression, in this way ensuring the equality of all nations and nationalities. Another, no less important, question of democracy is being solved by socialism, that of bringing real equality to women in all spheres of economic, political and cultural life.

p Genuine democracy expresses itself in home and foreign policies that are conducted in the interests of the mass of the people. Lenin said that the most significant expression of democracy is to be seen in the attitudes of countries to the basic question of war and peace. And indeed this is where the great difference between the aggressive policies of the supposedly 21 democratic but actually predatory imperialist powers on the one hand, and the truly democratic, peaceful policy of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, on the other, can be seen.

p The extension and development of socialist democracy and the correction of shortcomings that appear in the course of development arc all carried out under the direction of Communist and Workers’ Parties. Bourgeois propagandists and anti- socialist elements do their utmost to turn this essentially progressive process to their own ends. By capitalising on certain difficulties and shortcomings they seek to cast a slur on the activities of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, to remove the working class and its Marxist-Leninist vanguard from the leadership of society, and eventually to induce a degeneration of socialist democracy into bourgeois democracy so that the capitalist system can be restored.

p The leading role of the Party and the principle of democratic centralism are cried down by bourgeois ideologists. They insinuate that with every heightening of the Party’s leading role the activity and influence of other mass organisations diminish. In fact, however, as the leading role of the Party increases all working people’s organisations, whether governmental or non- governmental, begin to function more intensively.

p Experience of the struggle for socialism enabled Lenin to draw the following highly significant conclusion: "Parties may represent the interests of their class in one degree or another; they may undergo changes or modifications, but we do not yet know of any better form. The entire course of the struggle waged by Soviet Russia, which for three years has withstood the onslaught of world imperialism, is bound up with the fact that the Party has consciously set out to help the proletariat perform its function of educator, organiser and leader, without which the collapse of capitalism is impossible."  [21•1 

p These words of Lenin’s should be held sacred by all Marxists- Leninists. It is the duty of all Communists to rebuff any thrusts at the leading role of their parties, and to expose the treacherous nature of any slogan calling for the “liberalisation” of socialism.

p Socialism has put an end to the privileges of landowners, capitalists and other parasites, and it grants no privileges to their toadies or to pseudo-democrats who make slogans of freedom serve as a cloak for their crude individualism and selfishness.

p With the struggle of the two systems at its present high pitch, 22 socialist society has to advance its own criteria of democracy in order to prevent abuses of the freedoms of speech, of the press and of association. It cannot allow democratic rights to be used against the interests of the people, when it is the interests of the people that arc the very gauge of democracy under socialism.

p While it brings working people true freedom, socialist democracy obliges them to be well-disciplined and organised for the benefit of society as a whole. The connection between freedom and responsibility is dialectical. The one is impossible without the other: without responsibility, discipline and good organisation socialist democracy neither can nor will ever achieve its all-round development. Petty-bourgeois laxity can only do a great deal of damage.

Socialist democracy is improving all the time, as are its forms and methods. To defend socialist democracy and its gains from attacks by the advocates of imperialism and all those who seek to undermine socialism is the bounden duty of Communists, of the workers of the socialist countries, and of progressive humanity generally.

p Lenin’s theory of the socialist revolution covers the inseparable unity of the national and international factors in the struggle for socialism, and takes account of the diversity that exists in the political, economic and cultural development of different countries and peoples. The possibility discovered by Lenin of the socialist revolution triumphing at first in only one or a small number of countries opened up new approaches to the question of the international mutual aid rendered one another by the national detachments of the working class in the struggle for socialism, democracy and peace. Lenin set great store by the fraternal assistance that the world proletariat gave to the working people of Russia in defending the gains of the October Revolution from foreign interventionists and whiteguards. He saw in it a striking example of workers’ solidarity and loyalty to the principle of proletarian internationalism. At the same time he pointed out the enormous revolutionary influence of the Soviet state as the mighty bulwark of the world liberation movement.

p The international character of Lenin’s theory of the socialist revolution derives mainly from the view that the victories of socialist revolution in different countries arc all part of the world socialist revolution, and do not represent purely national developments. So the experience gained in the course of revolution in 23 only one or a few countries can be utilised, as far as its main, essential aspects go, by other countries and, indeed, by the entire world revolutionary movement. When properly understood, the national interests of the proletariat of one country or another do not run counter to the common international interests of the world proletariat, but coincide with them.

p Internationalism is a common law of socialist development by virtue of the fact that socialist countries have a single-type economic base, a single-type state system, a single-type class pattern, and a single aim—communism. Nevertheless, the all- round economic, political, military and diplomatic co-operation of the socialist countries does not mean that they neither have nor are able to have any specific indigenous features of their own resulting from the historical, geographical and politico-economic characteristics of each country.

p Proletarian internationalism certainly docs not reject the diversity of the contemporary world nor does it demand stereotyped, identical methods of building socialism, but it does presuppose both the desire and the ability to find the means of solving common international problems.

p Lenin taught Communists to take a single view of international and national interests in building and defending socialism. He never reconciled himself to those who strove to "lock up" socialism in their private national “compartments”, least of all to nationalists who treacherously sacrificed the interests of the world socialist revolution to limited national interests.

p The principle of internationalism makes it incumbent on the workers of all countries to unite their efforts not only within individual countries but on a world scale, too, in order to fight reaction and imperialism and to rally the masses in the struggle for peace.

p The CPSU is working to achieve the all-round consolidation of the unity of the socialist countries, especially in the defence of the gains of socialism. That is what the Warsaw Treaty Organisation is for. We must not allow any infringement of the mutual obligation to defend the socialist countries. The steps taken by the Soviet Union and other socialist countries in the critical days of August 1968 to render assistance to fraternal Czechoslovakia fully accord with the Leninist principles of the international defence of socialist states under the present conditions of tense struggle between the two social systems.

p For some time now attention has been focussed on the attitude of Communists to the question of national sovereignty. 24 Marxists-Leninists have always recognised the principle of national sovereignty and acted in its defence. With reference to the events in Czechoslovakia, the position of the CPSU on sovereignty has been defined with absolute clarity in Party and Government documents. The Appeal of five socialist governments to the Czechoslovak people clearly stated that troops of the fraternal countries had entered Czechoslovakia because of the menace that loomed over her national sovereignty and socialist achievements.

p This noble act of assistance to a socialist country was extensively exploited for the purposes of slandering the USSR. In the United States, West Germany and some other countries leading statesmen publicly alleged that the Soviet Union had altered its stand on sovereignty and national independence and now promulgated a doctrine of interference in other countries’ internal affairs.

p Yet it is well known that the Soviet Union consistently and resolutely upholds the principle of national sovereignty. By routing the German and Japanese invaders, the USSR helped many European and Asian peoples to regain their national independence and enhance their sovereignty. The Soviet Union took every step to defend the sovereignty of the Korean People’s Democratic Republic, helping it to repulse imperialist aggression. The Soviet peoples arc giving every assistance and support to the people of Vietnam fighting for their independence and freedom. And everybody knows of the Soviet Union’s efforts to defend socialist Cuba from the US imperialists and their henchmen. Again, all freedom-loving people know about the Soviet country’s constant support for the just cause of the Arab peoples fighting for their independence against Israeli aggression inspired by foreign imperialists, mainly those of the United States.

p The consistent line that the Soviet Union has pursued in upholding national sovereignty is also clear from the history of its relations with Czechoslovakia. In 1938, the Soviet Union resolutely came out in defence of that country’s sovereignty and declared its readiness to defend it from nazi aggressors by every means, including the use of arms. The Western powers, with the consent of the bourgeois Benes Government, betrayed the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia. The Munich Agreement enabled Hitler’s invaders to strangle the republic, and to deprive it of its national independence and its sovereignty. After routing the nazi invaders, the USSR restored sovereignty to Czechoslovakia and opened 25 the way to her democratic and socialist development. In 1968, when the socialist achievements of the working people of Czechoslovakia were threatened, the Soviet Union, together with fraternal countries, came to the assistance of the socialist forces and defended Czechoslovakia’s sovereignty from the subversive activities of anti-socialist forces at home and the encroachments of world imperialism. This fraternal aid by five socialist countries has been approved wholeheartedly by the Czechoslovak Party and Government delegation in the Joint Soviet-Czechoslovak Statement signed in Moscow on October 27, 1969. This aid, the Statement pointed out, was "an act of international solidarity which helped to bar the way of anti-socialist counter- revolutionary forces".  [25•1 

p Nationalists oppose national sovereignty to working-class solidarity. But that docs not mean that one can, in turn, oppose class solidarity to national sovereignty. Given proper understanding, they do not clash but coincide. We cannot allow national-imperialists or “national-Communists” to exploit the banner of the struggle for national independence.

p The Soviet Union’s stand on national sovereignty was clearly expressed in Comrade Brezhnev’s speech to the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party. He said:

p "The socialist states hold that the sovereignty of every country must be respected. We resolutely come out against interference in the affairs of any states, against any infringement of their sovereignty.

p "With that, we Communists show particular concern for the consolidation and defence of the sovereignty of states engaged in building socialism. The forces of imperialism and reaction are striving to deprive the people now of one, now of another socialist country of their hard-won sovereign right to secure the prosperity of their country and the well-being and happiness of the broad mass of the working people by building a society free from oppression and exploitation of any kind. And as soon as violations of that right meet with a concerted rebuff from the socialist camp, bourgeois propagandists raise a hue and cry about ‘defence of sovereignty’ and ‘non-interference’. It is clear that this is pure humbug and demagogy on their part. In fact, these vociferous individuals are anxious not to preserve socialist sovereignty but to destroy it."

To treasure the inviolable unity of sovereign socialist states— 26 that is the correct dialectical attitude to take on the question of the relation between what is national and what is international in the world socialist system.

p The division of the world into two camps, into two social systems, has led to the projection of the ideological struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie into the international arena. The question raised by Lenin—whether bourgeois or proletarian ideology shall prevail—has become a point of struggle not only in individual countries but on a world scale.

p Lenin attached great importance to the progress of socialist culture but gave no quarter to those who belittled the cultural heritage of bourgeois society. He developed the theory of the cultural revolution, calling both for the absorption of all the achievements of human civilisation and for the creation of a new and higher culture founded on communist ideology. Simultaneously Lenin taught the Party to tolerate no attempts to use cultural progress in order to spread bourgeois ideas and bourgeois morality. Lenin’s main propositions on the struggle against bourgeois ideology and on the tasks of educating the working people in the spirit of communism have retained their value to this day.

p Lenin linked education directly both with the building of communist society and with the struggle against bourgeois ideology on a world scale.

p It should be borne in mind that the development of state- monopoly capitalism has resulted in major changes not only in the economy but in the state machine, too, and this has affected the content and the forms of ideological influence. Besides exerting an ever greater pressure on the economy, the bourgeois state machine has assumed direct control of the psychological war on communism and all those who support people’s liberation movements.

p Bourgeois ideologists attack with special venom the ideas of Marxism-Leninism on the inevitable downfall of capitalism and the equally inevitable triumph of socialism throughout the world. They spare no efforts in trying to disprove the fact that the transition from capitalism to socialism constitutes the sum and substance of the modern epoch. They try to assure people that history is not moving towards the collapse of capitalism and the triumph of socialism but rather towards their “convergence”. 27 In order to give substance to this idea of the growing " convergence" of the two opposite socio-economic systems, of the “erosion”, “regeneration” and “liberalisation” of socialism, the apologists of imperialism set out, for example, to misrepresent the essence of the economic reforms now under way in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. They claim that they will result in the emergence of a hybrid society presumably combining the features of both socialism and capitalism. They pin their hopes particularly on the revisionists, who would like nothing better than to “amend” socialism by introducing into it some bourgeois principles—so as to create what they arc pleased to call "humanitarian socialism”, "one’s own model of socialism”, and so forth.

p Rejecting these bourgeois prognostications of “convergence”, Marxists-Leninists start from the fact that antagonistic contradictions cannot be overcome through any sort of fusion and that the struggle between the two opposite systems is a law of present world development. This understanding of the historical perspective follows from an analysis of the real processes and objective trends of contemporary history. Imperialism is not becoming stronger, and its reactionary and aggressive character is not getting any less but increasing, and that is, perhaps, the best possible refutation of the twaddle about “convergence”.

p The protagonists of the bourgeois world invent sham-optimistic theories in order to present capitalism’s future in a rosy light. The most fashionable thing today is to allude to the progress of science and technology, which, it is supposed, will lead to universal affluence. This being so, they maintain, everybody enjoys equal standards, exploitation is being abolished, class differences are being erased, the class struggle is being eliminated, and so the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society is no longer necessary!

p However, the Leninist approach to modern imperialism and to the social consequences of scientific and technological progress under private enterprise dispels these illusions which bourgeois ideologists spread. Even a cursory glance at the wealthiest society of the bourgeois world, the United States, is enough to demonstrate how fabulous super profits accumulate at one pole of society, while a hand-to-mouth existence obtains at the other. The class struggle is mounting, not ebbing away.

p The historic struggle of the forces of socialism, peace, democracy and national liberation against those of imperialism, reaction, neo-colonialism and war helps to increase the impact of 28 the ideas of Marxism-Leninism on the course of world events. The socialist world, and above all the Soviet Union as the largest socialist country setting an example of the consistent practical implementation of Marxist-Leninist theory, is the most dynamic force of the present day. It is no exaggeration to say that the world has now generally begun to develop at a faster rate both in terms of the social and national emancipation of people and in terms of scientific and technological progress and advances in the spheres of culture, education and health—and that all this was started off and has been mainly carried forward by the forces awakened and organised by the October Revolution, by Lenin’s Party, and by the Soviet socialist state.

p The world revolutionary process is limiting the sphere of imperialist domination more and more, undermining its foundations. But only socialist revolution in the capitalist countries can finally defeat imperialism.

p The cohesion of all anti-imperialist and anti-monopoly forces requires that Communists should adopt flexible and principled tactics, overcome sectarian prejudices against various mass movements affected by reformist or ultra-radical sentiments, and show an ability to draw the people into active struggle against imperialism and to isolate rightist and leftist leaders steeped in anti-communism. The CPSU and other fraternal parties have fought, and continue to fight, on two fronts—against Right-wing opportunists and Left-wing adventurers. The battle against revisionists of all kinds follows from the laws of development of the class struggle and from the very essence of revolutionary theory.

p Today, at this complex and decisive stage in the progress of mankind, Leninism remains the compass and lode star that can guide the peoples of the world to the only correct solutions to the urgent problems of history.

p Marxism-Leninism is the unfailing weapon which Communists use against bourgeois ideology. Lenin was uncompromising towards alien ideological influences and the exponents of bourgeois mentality and morality. While he highly valued the cultural forces of the bourgeoisie, that is, the experts in the spheres of technology, science, literature and art, he castigated bourgeois intellectual conformers without mercy. It was not seldom that he gave some famous master of culture a dressing down for lapsing into middle-class conventionality.

p Lenin’s works firmly rebuffed the slavish worshippers of capitalism and bourgeois democracy who took anti-socialist 29 elements under their wing. We should take our example from Lenin and fight all reactionaries, ideological exponents of capitalism and denouncers of socialism as uncompromisingly as he did.

Lenin has left us a great theoretical legacy—an inexhaustible treasure-house of advanced ideas applicable to modern times. Lenin’s immortal teachings have become a rousing banner and guide to action for millions of Soviet workers and workers in other socialist countries. They give inspiration to the peoples fighting for their national and social emancipation; and they arm working people with confidence in the triumph of peace and progress, in the ultimate victory of socialism and communism all over the world.