p The third period of development of Marxism opens with the triumph of its all-conquering ideas materialised in the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia— on one-sixth of the globe. The architect of this glorious deed was the party of Bolsheviks—the party of a new type created by the genius of Lenin, nurtured and fostered on the revolutionary ideas of Marxism. Lenin’s name has gone down in history as one of the founders of scientific communism. 63 The world communist movement has inscribed MarxismLeninism on its victorious banner.

p In scanning the yellowed newspaper sheets of that period we could cite a multitude of appreciative comments on the great role of Lenin. Even the avowed enemies of socialism, livid with fear in face of the liberation movement of the peoples, were obliged to recognise the historic service rendered by Lenin in putting into practice the doctrine of Marx and Engels. The bourgeois press compared him to a rock hurtling down the mountainside and clearing a way for the new. It was indeed a mighty rock that had broken loose from the moutain-top and was rushing down to crush and scatter from the path leading to communism all the old junk which the leaders of the Second International had piled up, to clear the path for the new, truly revolutionary, in the Marxist sense of the word, international communist movement.

p Lenin’s life and activities are the embodiment of the heroic deed of our Party and of the whole international communist movement. In the harsh years of the underground, in the struggle for the victory of the Great October Revolution, in the civil war, in the struggle to build and strengthen the socialist state, in the sweeping development of the world communist movement are vividly embodied the iron will and revolutionary energy of Lenin.

p Lenin was the brilliant leader and teacher of our Party, the great strategist of’the socialist revolution. Implacable towards the enemies of the Marxist doctrine, high-principled, endowed with a clear revolutionary perspective combined with extraordinary firmness of purpose, a wise and concrete leadership and unbreakable ties with the masses—such were the characteristic features of Lenin’s style of work. No leader in the world had ever had to direct such vast worker and peasant masses as Lenin. Lenin’s entire activities offer an example of immense theoretical power combined with a practical experience of the revolutionary struggle of incomparable scope and magnitude. Lenin, as no other man, was able to generalise the revolutionary experience of the masses, take up and develop their initiative, take lessons from and give lessons to the masses and lead them forward to victory.

p Lenin’s multifarious activities were truly amazing. They reveal at its most brilliant the impregnable shattering power of Marxist logic, crystal clearness, an iron will, devotion 64 to the Party, ardent faith in the people and love of the people. Lenin’s well-known and most precious traits were modesty, simplicity, a tactful attitude towards people and a ruthless one towards enemies, towards phrasemongers, whimperers and panic-mongers. Wise, unhurried in making’ decisions on complex political questions requiring thorough consideration of all aspects of a situation, Lenin at the same time was a past master in the art of making bold revolutionary decisions and sharp turns. All revolutionary fighters dream of being like Lenin, being political leaders of the Leninist type. Many a decade and century will pass in the development of society and people will always reverently study the heroic times in which Lenin, the great continuator of the cause of Marx and Engels, lived and worked.

p The October Socialist Revolution, carried out under the banner of Marxism-Leninism, was not only a gigantic gain of the international proletariat, of all the working and oppressed peoples, but a decisive defeat of world revisionism within the Marxist movement. Eroded by the canker of opportunism, nationalism and pacifism, the Second (Socialist) International collapsed like a house of cards. The European Social-Democratic parties fell apart or broke up into hostile splinter groups, and their Right-wing leaders deflected to the camp of imperialism.

p The very first days of the First World War revealed the vile betrayal of the working-class cause by the Right-wing Socialists. In almost every country they supported without a murmur their reactionary, bourgeois governments in the conduct of the imperialist war, and, what is more, they themselves kindled the flame of nationalist and chauvinist mania. In the course of that criminal war Scheidemann in Germany, Vandervelde in Belgium, Henderson in Britain, Guesde in France, and the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia joined the cabinets of their imperialist governments and actively helped the bourgeoisie to conduct the predatory war and befuddle the working class. The Second International died an ignominious death. Its acknowledged leaders openly betrayed the cause of the working class.

p But, as the popular saying runs, "there is nothing so bad as not to be good for something". It was in reality a great process of rehabilitation and consolidation of the world revolutionary movement. Everywhere, in every part of the globe, under the impact of the October Revolution, 65 Communist Parties of the Leninist type began to arise, drawing into their ranks the most steadfast, honest and courageous revolutionaries prepared to dedicate themselves to the cause of struggle for the emancipation of all the working people from the yoke of capitalism. It was upon this revolutionary bedrock that the Third, Communist, International was built, purged of the dross of revisionism. Summing up the progress that had been made, Lenin said:

p The First International had laid the foundations of the proletarian international struggle for socialism.

p The Second International had prepared the ground for the sweeping spread of the movement in a number of countries.

p The Third International took to itself the fruits of the Second International’s work cleansed of its opportunist, social-chauvinist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois dross, and started to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat.

p The Third, Communist, International rendered an undying service in that it solemnly proclaimed it to be the sacred duty of all the world’s Communist Parties to guard the gains of the October Socialist Revolution as the apple of one’s eye, to defend the Soviet Socialist Republic—the true fatherland of all the working people of the world. This was genuine Marxist-Leninist internationalism, which rallied all the world’s Communists into a single fraternal family and demonstrated in practice the unconquerable strength of the revolutionary army of proletarian fighters for socialism.

p With the formation of the first socialist state in history the class struggle in the world arena assumed a sharper and deeper character. History placed the Soviet Republic in the front line of the struggle against world imperialism. At first the imperialists hoped by joint efforts and an armed frontal attack to crush the Soviet Republic, but thanks to the unmatched heroism of the people following the lead of Lenin’s party, thanks to the international support of the world proletariat, they were crushingly defeated and compelled to retreat. Next they tried to starve the country out by imposing an economic, political, diplomatic and military blockade, but this did not help them either.

p So then the world bourgeoisie resorted to its tried and trusted method—that of employing its agents within the U.S.S.R., making use of the opposition forces within the Bolshevik Party to fight Leninism. It was well aware that 66 all kinds of people had wormed their way into the ranks of the Bolsheviks during the revolution—fellow-travellers, petty-bourgeois Socialists, whose parties had utterly lost the confidence of the working people and in the course of the Revolution and the Civil War had gone over into the camp of the counter-revolution. Among these fellow-travellers were Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries of different shades—Right and Centrists, Internationalist Mensheviks, Trotskyists, “Left” S.R.s, Maximalist S.R.s, People’s Communists, etc.

p True, many of them served the revolution honestly, but quite a number of them had joined the Bolshevik Party in order to disrupt it from within. It is not surprising therefore that after the victory of the Revolution and especially after the end of the Civil War, as soon as the country embarked on the construction of socialism, there appeared within the Party numerous revisionist and opportunist currents— Trotskyists, “Left” Communists, members of the Democratic Centralism group, Anarcho-Syndicalists (the “workers’ opposition"), all working from different sides to overthrow Lenin’s plan for building socialism in a single country. Obviously, the Party could not afford such a “luxury”, and at its Tenth Congress (1921) it wholeheartedly adopted Lenin’s resolution declaring factional struggle to be incompatible with party discipline and membership of the Party.

p At the same time, by decision of the Central Committee, a purge of the Party’s ranks was carried out in 1921, which enabled it to a considerable extent to weed out anti-Party elements, especially redyed Mensheviks and their allies, and to strengthen its ranks. The Lenin Enrolment, which was carried out three years later, drew into the Party the best forces of the working class and raised its prestige still higher not only within the country, but in the international arena. Lenin often drew attention to the fact that the Party’s ideological strength did not drop from the clouds. The Party gained strength in the struggle for the purity of Marxist ideas and united its ranks along two lines: on the one hand, through self-cleansing as an indispensable law of development for any revolutionary party, and on the other, through reinforcement of its ranks with the best elements of the working class, in order to preserve within it a central hard core of workers as a cementing force. Without this no 67 proletarian, revolutionary party can escape the risk of cluttering its ranks and courting the danger of degradation and slipping down to the path of Right reformism or foolhardy adventurism.

p Thus, the schemes of the revisionists within our Party at the first stage of the Soviet government’s existence were nipped in the bud. Both Right and “Left” revisionists were silenced and forced temporarily to capitulate. One would think that after such an epoch-making victory of Marxism as the October Socialist Revolution there would be no room left at all for revisionism. But the international revolutionary proletariat was destined to experience another disappointment similar to the one it had experienced after the death of Engels.

p The same thing happened after the death of Lenin, when revisionism came to life again and went into action. Significantly, on this occasion too the spokesmen of revisionism were men who called themselves Marxists-Leninists of the "true faith"—Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky and others, who teamed up with the Trotskyists and took their turn in opposing Leninism. The situation within the C.P.S.U.(B.) was extremely grave. This time not only the world outlook of Marxism-Leninism, but the gains of the socialist revolution were at stake: the question at issue was whether the world’s first state of the workers and peasants was to be or not to be. We know only too well that not the least of the factors that caused the downfall of the Paris Commune was inner-party strife!

p Speaking of the gravity of the situation, we shall have to go back to the events of the late nineties of the last century and the early twentieth century, when revisionism succeeded in disrupting from within such a large revolutionary workers’ party as the German Social-Democratic Labour Party. Is there, in this case, any logical connection between events two decades apart? There is! The general strategic line of the bourgeois agents remains unchanged— to blow up Marxism-Leninism from within. But a new factor has emerged. Whereas previously revisionism had attacked Marxism mainly from the Right, we now find revisionism first attacking Leninism from the “Left”.

p The field against Leninism was taken by Trotskyism—one of the most typical of petty-bourgeois currents impregnated with the ideas of Bakunin, Proudhon, Most and Parvus, 68 teetering from one extreme to another and combining within itself the Right-wing capitulatory tendencies of the Mensheviks with adventurism and anarchism. Trotskyism as a political trend was the most harmful at all stages of the Russian revolution. Estranged as it was from the proletarian midst, Trotskyism represented a mixed bag of politicking elements recruited from diverse categories of the urban petty bourgeoisie and part of the professional intelligentsia. Taking refuge behind revolutionary phraseology, Trotskyism at the same time represented the most abominable form of arrant opportunism. It is not surprising therefore that at the various stages of the revolution the Trotskyists always acted on its extreme flanks, either as extreme “Leftists” or extreme Rightists. This gave Lenin grounds for saying that with the Trotskyists “Left” phrases harmonised well with Right deeds.

p The pain caused by the loss of their leader and teacher Lenin had not yet lost its poignancy in the hearts of the working people of the world when Trotsky came out with his booklet The Lessons of October, where everything was turned inside out. Leninism, "it appears", was a fiction, and was simply "Trotskyism re-armed". The book furiously argues the case for the Menshevik conception regarding the impossibility of building socialism in one country. The solution of this problem, it claimed, was possible only in the international field in the spirit of the TrotskyistParvusist "permanent revolution", and the idea of a union of workers and peasants in socialist construction was rejected. In short, this was an open attempt to abandon Leninism in favour of Trotskyism.

p But this was nothing more than a signal for an attack on Lenin’s party, on Lenin’s theory of socialist revolution. It is noteworthy that this Trotskyist signal "from the Left" was responded to with alacrity by the decrepit renegades of the Right—Bernstein, Kautsky, Hilferding, Bauer and Springer (Renner). The splitters and disrupters within the young, recently organised communist parties of Germany, France, Italy and other countries immediately raised their head. The struggle between the revolutionary and revisionist trends within the Marxist-Leninist movement increased in intensity.

p This was the second difficult moment within Marxism, when the revisionists attempted to have their revenge for 69 the defeat they had once suffered. An alarming aspect of this was that revisionism’s fiercest attacks were launched at the citadel of the international communist movement— the C.P.S.U.(B). The first to respond to Trotsky’s call was Zinoviev. He propounded a thesis that was most popular with the ideologues of the bourgeoisie—that Leninism was a nationally limited phenomenon applicable only in a backward peasant country. As for Lenin’s teaching concerning the costruction of socialism in a single country, he considered this a myth that was bound to be dispelled. Another who lost no time in answering the call was Kamenev, who unburdened himself of everything he had secretly been nourishing for years (at least since 1910). In outward form everything was smooth. He attacked Trotsky for his Leftadventurist one-track approach and amid a flood of honeyed reservations confirmed the correctness of Lenin’s theory of socialist revolution. But when it came to the arguments concerning the possibility of building socialism in the U.S.S.R., Kamenev opined that Lenin’s theory, under the conditions prevailing in “backward” Russia, was impracticable and that it could only be applied in the developed capitalist countries of Western Europe.

p No wonder that at the 14th Congress of the Party this blatantly contradictory Zinoviev-Kamenev revisionist conclusion was qualified as the most fraudulent and most Pharasaical of all revisionist platforms that had ever existed. It should be noted that at first Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky came out strongly against Trotskyism and its ZinovievKamenev yes-men. They rejected the concept of Trotskyism and the new Zinoviev-Kamenev opposition. During the political debates at the 14th Party Congress Bukharin, speaking as co-reporter of the C.C. C.P.S.U.(B.), sharply criticised the Zinoviev-Kamenev platform. At the same time, however, it came to light that this criticism was made, not from Marxist-Leninist positions, but rather from the positions of Right-wing Social-Democratic reformism.

p It did not take long for the Party to realise the true nature of this out-and-out Kautsky-Hilferding platform. Bukharin, the chief ideologue of the “Left” Communists, suddenly swung over into the camp of the Rights and began to evolve and elaborate the Hilferding theory of “organised” capitalism, the "attenuation of the class struggle" and the growing of capitalism into socialism". Proceeding from 70 a wrong evaluation of the New Economic Policy he advanced the obviously erroneous slogan of "Get rich", "Go ahead and accumulate" and then argued the concept of " equilibrium of the two systems", "spontaneity and a policy of drift" under the conditions of socialist construction. The same thing happened with Rykov. Uncertain of the victory of the October Socialist Revolution, he began to speak again about the impossibility of overcoming the age-old backwardness of the country, and gave way to panic and despondency in face of the tremendous difficulties of socialist construction. As head of the government Rykov displayed considerable irresolution in implementing the economic plans and often aligned himself now with the “Left”, now with the Right opportunists.

p Small wonder that subsequently the Trotskyists and Bukharinites quickly found common ground and joined forces against the Party’s Leninist general line at building socialism in our country. It is not difficult to understand what fatal consequences this would have had if any one of these political trends had gained the upper hand. Now, analysing past events, we can say that the fruits of victory of the socialist revolution in our country would most certainly have been lost if either the Trotskyists or Bukharinites had taken over the leadership of the Party.

p But this was not what the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, had worked for. There rose to the occasion true, genuine disciples of Marx, Engels and Lenin, who did not flinch in face of the revisionist menace, did not bend beneath the violent attacks of the pseudo-Marxists and pseudo-Leninists, but administered a crushing defeat upon them. The Leninist host of professional revolutionaries, rallied in steel ranks, stood its ground, did not appeal to the revisionists for moderation or compromise, but fearlessly and openly called upon the Party to put the matter to the issue.

p In the trenuous and intense struggle for Marxism- Leninism the Central Committee did not resort to the simple expedient of weeding out the otherwise-minded, but confided the whole political “quarrel” to the arbitrament of the Party. And what was the result? The discussions that followed one after the other after the death of Lenin condemned both the “Left” revolutionarians and the Right reformists. At the last Party discussion held in 1927 the united Trotskyist-Zinovievite-Kamenevite opposition 71 bloc collected altogether four thousand supporters in a 700,000-strong Party. The majority of these four thousand were people who had simply taken the word of the opposition leaders and who, after the opposition had been shown up in its true colours, withdrew from it. The Fifteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. resolved that the conduct of the Trotskyists was incompatible with membership of the Party and expelled from the Party the ideologues of revisionism for organising anti-Party activities. That was how the Party unraveled that fatal knot.

p I have already spoken about the gravity of the situation that arose within the C.P.S.U.(B.). Indeed, MarxismLeninism was in great danger. The trouble was that the leaders of “Left” revolutionarism and Right reformism held key posts in the Government and the Party. Trotsky up to 1925 stood at the head of the Soviet Union’s armed forces; Zinoviev was at the head of the Leningrad Party organisation and of the C.P.S.U.(B.) delegation to the Comintern; Kamenev was Chairman of the Politbureau of the Party’s Central Committee; Rykov was head of the Government as Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the U.S.S.R.; Bukharin was Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper Pravda and then head of the C.P.S.U.(B.) delegation to the Comintern; Tomsky was at the head of the Soviet trade unions. In addition, the Trotskyists and Bukharinites had been planting their own men in key jobs in the organs of the press and other ideological institutions.

p The imperialist bourgeoisie, in concert with the bankrupt Right Socialists of Europe, enthusiastically supported the Trotskyists and Bukharinites and were already looking forward to the approaching victory of their virtual allies in the person of the renegades and splitters. It will be recalled that the whole bourgeois and pseudo-socialist press lauded the Trotskyist-Bukharinite ringleaders to the skies. We shall not quote these paeans. All we shall say is that the revisionist politicians at that time committed black deeds against the Party, against the Land of Soviets.

p In this difficult situation the Comintern, the fraternal Communist Parties, the brave professional revolutionaries, steeled stalwarts of the international Leninist guard, stood up staunchly for the Leninist core of the C.P.S.U.(B.). They correctly evaluated the lessons of history in the light of principle by recognising that the struggle against the 72 bourgeois agents within the Marxist-Leninist movement concerned not only the C.P.S.U.(B.) but the entire international communist movement. Therefore, in actively supporting the fight against the Trotskyist-Bukharinite splitters within the C.P.S.U(B.) the Marxists-Leninists nipped in the bud the splitting activities of their agents within their own parties.

p From this difficult and intense struggle against both “Left” adventurism and Right reformism the fighting ranks of the fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties emerged still stronger. The international communist movement gave birth to real proletarian leaders. Communists, all fighters for the proletarian revolution, will always remember and honour the memory of their unforgettable leaders, the Leninist guard of brave professional revolutionaries, who did so much to strengthen the Communist Parties and defend the first land of socialism.

p As a result of the united action of the revolutionary Marxists-Leninists a crushing defeat was inflicted on the revisionist agents within the international communist movement. The victorious banner of Marxism-Leninism was in reliable hands. The revisionists, factionalists, were forced once again to lay down their arms not only within the C.P.S.U.(B.) but in the world communist movement as well. In the final analysis this ideological and organisational unity of true Marxists-Leninists, which was won and strengthened in the struggle, was packed with elemental significance for the fight against fascism during the Second World War. The victory of socialism in the U.S.S.R., the gigantic strides in industrialisation, the socialist remodelling of agriculture and the cultural revolution changed the face of the Soviet land, turned it into the revolutionary bastion of the world’s working and oppressed peoples in their fight for national and social liberation.

p Thus, the Great October Socialist Revolution, the consolidation of the world’s first state of the workers and peasants and the successful construction of socialism in the Soviet Union cut the ground from under the feet of the antiMarxist, anti-Leninist trends. Moreover, the fraternal communist parties, grown stronger, drew the teeth of these political trends everywhere by their resolute and highprincipled action. All this culminated in the utter ideological defeat of the Right-reformist and Left-adventurist elements and their expulsion from the Comintern.

The victory of the Soviet people in the Patriotic War was not only the victory of our socialist system. It raised the teaching of Marxism-Leninism to its highest ever level and spread its ideas throughout the world. One would think that Right reformism and “Left” revolutionarism, vanquished by life itself, would never reappear upon the political scene. In fact after the Second World War these trends had no political weight. The renegades had once more been disgraced and confounded. But, as the capitalist world gradually came to itself, as the world socialist system emerged and developed and the struggle between the two worlds sharpened, both these political currents came to the surface again.