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p Falsification of the role played by the CPSU in Soviet society is one of the main components of anti-communism’s struggle against the USSR.

p The leading role of the Communist Party is one of the fundamental issues of the revolutionary movement and the building of the new society. Today it has become the pivot of the struggle between Marxist-Leninists and the proponents of various forms of revisionism.

p The attacks on the CPSU’s leading role are linked with the far-reaching changes that form the content of the modern epoch, with the influence that the Soviet Union and the socialist community as a whole exercise on world development. The CPSU and the Communist parties of other socialist countries have not only headed the working class and all other working people in the drive for society’s revolutionary transformation but have achieved outstanding results on that road.

p In order to discredit the CPSU’s leading role and sow distrust for its policies, anti-communists distort the results, character and methods of the Communist Party’s work and the entire experience accumulated by the USSR and the CPSU. They believe that the dissemination of new, subtle falsifications may encourage “critical” assessments by the citizens of the USSR and other socialist countries, particularly by young people, of the Communist Party’s policies and of the results that have been achieved on the basis of 113 these policies, sow distrust in these policies and precipitate a striving to change them.

p The same objective is pursued by the attacks on the CPSU, its policies and the experience of the USSR by the Right and “Left” revisionists, Trotskyists, renegades of communism and the Peking “theorists”. Their anti-Sovietism dovetails with imperialist anti-Soviet propaganda, with anti- communism, and objectively serves the interests of imperialism. The revisionists’ attacks pour grist on the mill of anti- communist propaganda in its efforts to undermine the CPSU’s leading role and weaken Soviet society.

p Anti-communist propaganda plays on the CPSU’s criticism of the personality cult and constantly misconstrues the history of the CPSU.

p The idea behind the falsifications of the CPSU’s role in Soviet society is that at the present technical and economic level achieved by the Soviet Union as a result of the scientific and technical revolution, the Communist Party is no longer needed as a leading force; more, that it is an obstruction to the further development of the USSR. The Sovietologists attempt to substantiate this false idea by denying the scientific character of the Communist Party’s ideological and theoretical foundations, of the principles of its leadership and organisation and of its entire policy.

p Although Marxism-Leninism consistently expresses the basic interests of the working class and all working people and is a tested scientific theory giving an objective picture of the world and a true orientation in practical activity, and although it is adopted by a growing number of fighters against exploitation and oppression, subtle attempts are made to prove that it is unscientific. These attempts include portraying Leninism as a specifically Russian doctrine, depicting Marxism as a faith, as a special religion, presenting Marxism-Leninism as “disintegrating” or “pluralistic”, “obsolete”, “inhumane” and “anti-democratic”. The oracles of anti-communism do not scruple to use any means and methods to sell their own interpretations of Lenin that have 114 nothing to do with the true purport of his works, attributing their own views to him and mixing Marxism-Leninism with revisionist distortions. These methods are calculated on influencing uninformed people, who know of Marxism-Leninism only from the writings of the anticommunists.

p Richard Lowenthal, a leading West German anti- communist, dismisses the communist concept of a classless society as Utopian and on that basis denies the socialist character of society in the USSR and the other European socialist countries in an effort to prove that Marxism-Leninism is “unscientific”. In his opinion, the only genuine type of socialist society is one that is founded on the ideas and principles of Right-wing social-democracy/* He saw the profile of consummated social democracy in the plans of the counterrevolutionary, anti-socialist forces in Czechoslovakia who attempted to effect a return to capitalism under the signboard of democracy. It does not disturb him that all the SocialDemocratic parties that had the possibility of creating a “society of complete social democracy” or a “democratic socialist society” used the power, given them by electors, to create conditions beneficial to private property which is the foundation of exploitation of man by man.

p The anti-communists depict the policies of the CPSU as being the “only correct policy”, adding however that it is dictated by “practical needs” and “traditional national interests”, and not by “theoretical formulas”. In this way they seek to discredit practical policy and its basis, revolutionary theory.

p In the writings of bourgeois political experts Soviet society and the socialist system are portrayed as having taken shape by virtue of circumstances unforeseen by the Communist Party, and in spite of the theories not only of Marx and Engels but also of “pre-revolutionary” Lenin. It would be ludicrous to expect that the unprecedented social system the Communists had undertaken to build should act immediately as a smoothly operating mechanism.

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p The building of socialist society in the USSR presented many difficult problems, which sprang not only from the country’s relative economic backwardness, that was compounded by the ravages of two wars and the intervention, but also by the fact that there were no ready-made models and no experience of socialist construction to go by. The new society was built in a complex international situation, in a country encircled by hostile capitalist states. In working out concrete forms of organising and managing the economy the Communist Party had to experiment, reject unjustified methods, look for and test new ways. The Communists have never claimed to have ready-made recipes for every day, for each step. However, the Communist Party had at its disposal a scientific theory—Marxism-Leninism—that gave it a sure orientation, indicated the correct path leading to socialism and the guiding principles for advancing along that path. By applying Marxism-Leninism to concrete conditions the Communist Party drew up the programme for socialist construction in the USSR.

p The Soviet experience is universally valid not because, as is alleged, it was subsequently attributed to the teaching of Marx but because it reflects the general laws of the transition to socialism discovered on the basis of Marxism- Leninism and confirmed by practice.

p The views propounded by Roger Garaudy, who “defends” the purity of Marxism against the Soviet practice of socialist construction, have much in common with those of Brzezinski. Garaudy dismisses the CPSU’s ideological foundations by rejecting the scientific character of its policies.

p It must be underscored that, like the renegades, the Right and “Left” revisionists are, by their claims that they want to “protect” and “enrich” Marxism, return to “true Leninism” and raise on high the “red banner of Marxism- Leninism”, in fact rendering anti-communism an invaluable service. By depicting every distortion of Marxism-Leninism as “true Marxism” or “true Leninism” and by “defending” it 116 against the practice of socialist construction in the USSR and existing socialist society they are validating the fabrications of anti-communist propaganda about the “ disintegration” of Marxism and the “unscientific” character of the CPSU’s ideological foundations.

p Anti-communist propaganda’s efforts to prove that communism is unscientific are not accidental. The anti- communists believe that by using this as the basis for all their falsifications of the Communist Party’s role in Soviet society, of its aims, organisation and political principles they can easily prove that its role in Soviet society is determined not by objective requirements but by subjective factors such as the desire to “retain power”, to ensure “domination by a definite stratum or a group”, and so on. The sense and purpose of this logic was revealed by the US Professor of Sociology Mark G. Field, who wrote: “If the party were to discover, or acknowledge, that its ideology is based on ’false premises’ (an improbable event, to be sure), it would logically have no choice but to dissolve itself.”^^5^^ The reason for the tireless efforts of the Sovietologists to discover “false premises” of MarxismLeninism is to all intents and purposes linked with the hopes of precipitating the dissolution of the CPSU.

p There is a feedback in the methods employed by anticommunist propaganda: from the “unscientific” character of Marxism-Leninism it deduces that the Communist Party had “usurped” the leading position in socialist society. To prove their point the anti-communists make wide use of their distortions of the history of the CPSU.

p In order to denigrate the CPSU’s leading role in Soviet society they falsify its lofty and noble aims, which express the vital interests of the working class and all other working people, the dream of the exploited and the oppressed for a just society, and which are winning many millions of people to the side of the communist movement.

p To the natural question of the purpose pursued by the Communists in taking and holding power, the sages of anticommunism have several answers, which, they feel, must 117 satisfy different groups of people depending on their political views, education, experience, prejudices and so forth.

p For the philistine held captive by anti-communist propaganda they have the argument that the purpose of the Communist Party is to seize power first in one country and then to “export communism” to other countries and forcibly establish communist world rule. These purposes concocted by the anti-communists and attributed to the CPSU were used as the cover for the cold war against communism and the USSR.

p After the Soviet policy of peace had exploded the “ communist threat” myth that was being spread in the West, the Sovietologists began to look for new arguments in support of their allegations. For instance, out of the fact that the Soviet Union has become a mighty industrial power anticommunist propaganda seeks to draw the conclusion that the CPSU pursues “expansionist” aims. Alvin Z. Rubinstein of the USA, who styles himself as a “Kremlinologist”, asserts that having become a “super-power” the Soviet Union “ believes ... it is entitled to a far greater measure of participation in the evolution and management of the nation-state system lying beyond its immediate borders”. He interprets this as “the will to maximise its presence in an expanding network of areas and relationships”.^^6^^

p Aims of this sort have never been pursued by the Soviet Union. The foreign policy programme charted by the 24th Congress of the CPSU is known to the whole world. It is a policy of resolutely opposing the imperialist designs of war and aggression, of preserving peace, of establishing and consolidating friendship among nations. An inseverable point of this programme is solidarity with the peoples fighting for national and social emancipation.

p The CPSU’s policy has nothing in common with the aims attributed to it by Rubinstein.

p Some Sovietologists are prepared to “assume” that the Bolsheviks had seized power in order to modernise the country and put an end to its economic backwardness. 118 However, this is not only a distortion of the Communist Party’s actual aims and work by reducing them to individual concrete tasks that were tackled during the building of socialism. This conclusion is the prelude to proving that the Communist Party becomes superfluous after a country has been industrialised and modernised.

p The attacks on the CPSU’s leading role in Soviet society take the form of portraying it as an obstacle to further progress in the age of the scientific and technical revolution. Typical in this respect is the conclusion offered by Mark G. Field that “the party has become in many respects a conservative, if not a reactionary, force in Soviet society”.^^7^^

p A closer look at the “arguments” advanced by the anticommunists in support of this slander shows that they distort facts and documents or are, at best, groundless assertions.

p For instance, Raymond Aron, who is regarded as a prominent French anti-communist theorist, claims that after it seizes power the Communist Party inevitably evolves into a conservative force. “After they came to power,” he writes, “the Marxist-Leninists, the ex-revolutionaries, have themselves become conservatives and are preaching the old dogmas of conservatism: extolling national unity and denouncing individuals and groups who prejudice this unity.”^^8^^

p In declaring that national unity is a conservative idea, Aron refuses to consider the foundation and motivation for the proclamation and build up of national unity. He equates the national unity of the working class and all other working people, needed for the building of a socialist society and the abolition of exploitation and oppression, with the national unity slogan used by fascism for enslavement, aggression and the perpetuation of exploitation and oppression.

p The Communist Party has always regarded the nationalities question and the problem of national unity in the context of the interests of the working class and socialism. For that reason it considered the unity of the working people, irrespective of their nationality, as central in the drive to 119 build a socialist society, and for that reason it emphatically condemned all the enemies of internationalist unity who hindered the consolidation of socialist society.

p The Soviet Union’s experience over the past half century shows that without the internationalist unity of the working class and the whole Soviet people it would have been impossible to build up a strong multinational state, surmount the enormous difficulties of socialist construction, defeat the powerful forces of fascist aggression and successfully champion peace.

p The CPSU’s Leninist national policy and its struggle for the internationalist unity of the working class and all other working people in the USSR have given shape to new relations between nations based on equality, mutual assistance, friendship and co-operation.

p The anti-communist ideologists are attempting to deduce that the CPSU plays a “retarding role” from their imagined contradiction between the “totalitarian state”, as they call the USSR, and the requirements of what they term the rising “producers’ society”, between the requirements of scientific and technological progress and the system of power.

p Keith Pavitt, the British student of problems of economic development, believes that the requirements of the Soviet Union’s economic development are in collision with its political system, and that even if attempts were made to adapt that system to the requirements of the scientific and technological revolution it would be very difficult to surmount that collision.^^9^^ Richard Lowenthal holds that there is a “ contradiction between the aspiration to achieve a fuller satisfaction of the requirements of Soviet consumers and the need to strengthen and extend the influence of Soviet ideology . . . to strengthen control by the Soviet Party apparatus over all other spheres”.^^10^^ Lowenthal is aware of the decisions of the 24th CPSU Congress to raise the living standard of the Soviet people and of the CPSU’s policy in carrying out these decisions, but he discounts them as they are at variance with his conclusions.

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p In spite of all its efforts bourgeois political science has failed to come up with an adequate description of the Soviet social and political system and of the role played in it by the Communist Party. Whereas some ten years ago the Sovietologists, according to their own admission, agreed on the substance of the Soviet system and the character of the relationship between the Party and society, today that unanimity has vanished. “Now,” writes the Canadian Professor of Political Science, Jerry F. Hough, “there are a number of competing images or models.”^^11^^

p The model of a “directed society” portrays the Soviet social and political system as the result of the determination and actions of political leaders to mould a new man “without regard to the individual and to social costs”.

p In the model of “oligarchic petrification”, Soviet society is depicted as a hierarchic pyramid. The Communist Party is identified with the Party apparatus and presented as the centre of the entire state and economic apparatus. The political leaders, the exponents of this model assert, constantly underline the significance of ideology but lack the determination to remake society.

p The model of “institutional pluralism” describes Soviet society as a series of changes generated by industrialisation, and the officials of the state and economic apparatus are depicted as functional specialists, who, much as Western specialists, are the main agents of these changes.

p Neither “directed society” nor “oligarchic petrification” satisfies Professor Hough as a model characterising the present-day development of Soviet society. While the model of a “directed society”, he says, may help to explain some achievements rooted in an earlier period of the USSR, it seems of very little use in explaining the dynamics of recent years.^^12^^ Hough rejects this model as utterly useless in explaining the striving of the Soviet leadership to heed the suggestions from the people and the practice of discussing political issues. He sees the “oligarchic petrification” model as coming into conflict with the existing trend toward the 121 rejuvenation of the Party leadership at town and district level, the concentration of all levels of the leadership on the scientific organisation of labour, the discussion of the need for modifying the balance of investments between the producer and consumer industries, the reflection of this in the ninth five-year plan, which called for an increase in the output of consumer goods, the more rapid growth of the incomes of collective farmers as compared with other groups of the population, and the present Party policy of levelling up the living standards of different groups of the population. Hough considers that the steps initiated in the USSR in recent years to reduce the differences in incomes have had a much greater effect for the lower-paid categories than the declaration of war on poverty by the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration in the USA. He writes that “the Soviet Union in recent years has seen a shift in income distribution that is quite striking by Western standards, and that the pattern of income distribution in the Soviet Union today is substantially more egalitarian than it is in the advanced Western countries, particularly if income from property is taken into account”.^^13^^

p No unbiassed observer can be satisfied with the “directed society” and “oligarchic petrification” models because of the obvious discrepancy between their postulates and the selfevident facts of Soviet reality.

p The attempts to surmount this discrepancy by squeezing the facts of Soviet reality into these patterns or new models result in an interpretation that has nothing in common with reality. For instance, efforts to explain why broad discussions of political issues have lately entered into the practice of the CPSU lead the exponents of the “institutional pluralism” model, to put it mildly, to the unsubstantiated assertion that the Soviet leadership lacks assurance and confidence in resolving social problems.

p The reason of the dissatisfaction of the Sovietologists with the models proffered by bourgeois science is not only that with their help they cannot explain many indisputable 122 facts of Soviet reality and the Soviet Union’s achievements but also that on their basis it is impossible to foretell the future development of Soviet society. While for the man-in-the-street the discrepancies between the characteristics stemming from these models and the indisputable facts of Soviet reality may be explained by stretching a point or misrepresenting the role and policies of the Communist Party, this can hardly satisfy the rulers of the capitalist world. For them it is imperative to know what changes and achievements in the USSR they have and will have to deal with, how the present-day development of the USSR may “threaten” the capitalist world in the future and what they must be prepared for.

p Bourgeois political science’s inability to offer a correct analysis of the Soviet social and political system and its present-day achievements and to pinpoint the trends of its development and its possible results in the immediate future is by no means due to the “inconsistent” development of the USSR, as the Sovietologists assert, but to the class character of that science and its unscientific approach. Professor Hough urges Sovietologists “to separate our distaste for the Soviet system from our descriptive analysis of it”.^^14^^ However, this is unattainable to bourgeois political science as a whole and to Sovietology in particular, for it would mean an acknowledgement by bourgeois social science of its class character and, consequently, of its bourgeois, class, biassed approach to the study of social phenomena.

p The scientific character of the Communist Party’s policies is determined by the need for economic and social prognostication in elaborating and implementing the plans for communist construction in the epoch of the scientific and technical revolution.

p Without a scientific approach it is impossible not only to see the laws of social development but also to make a comprehensive study and analysis of the actual present-day processes and emergent tendencies and to take the experience of the people into account.

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p The fact that the policies of the Communist Party are scientific is one of the cardinal reasons of their success. It is this that enables the Communist Party to set tasks conforming to the requirements of social development and define the entire sum and interrelation of basic economic, socio-political and ideological factors. By virtue of the scientific character of its policies the Communist Party knows not only what society is like at a given moment but what it will be like after a scientific plan of all-sided development is carried out.

p Anti-communist propaganda is aided by various renegades, who in an effort to lend weight to their utterances claim that as former members of Communist parties they have a better understanding of the essence and problems of the communist movement.

p In their attacks on the CPSU and other Communist parties, Milovan Djilas, Teodoro Petkoff, Roger Garaudy, Ernst Fischer and other revisionists repeat the familiar thesis of anti-communist propaganda that the Party of the Leninist type is obsolete and useless. In support of this slanderous assertion, Fischer echoes the argument of the Sovietologists that the Leninist-type Party, which had been formed in the historical conditions of Russia, is unsuited for developed countries. Instead of Communist parties, he and Garaudy suggest creating a new “Left” coalition, in which nothing would remain of the Communist Party as a militant leader. Fischer sees the “possibility of forming new associations of like-minded people and fighters in spite of the old, fossilised positions. If you like, of Marxists and non-Marxists, of Communists and Social-Democrats, of Catholics and Protes- tants.”^^15^^

p The fact that the attacks of the revisionists against the CPSU and other Communist parties serve the aims of anticommunist propaganda has been noted with satisfaction by Zbigniew Brzezinski. He declared that they “have already emphasised the need to redefine the Communist Party as an altogether new Party that would include the entire Left, that 124 would not be ideological in the strict sense of the word, and that would certainly not be Leninist”.^^16^^ This chimes in with the interests of the anti-communists who dream of ending the Communist Party’s leadership of the revolutionary process and the role played by the CPSU in Soviet society.

p This role is by no means determined by the seizure of power, it does not depend on the need to extend power or establish complete control over society, much less on the need to preserve the ruling position of the elite, by which the anti-communists mean the Communist Party. History knows of societies and states in which the rulers, parties and entire classes used every means to retain their predominance. However, history has inexorably and mercilessly passed sentence on them and there was nothing that could save them.

p The Communist Party’s leading role does not depend solely on the desires of its members or its leaders. This role springs from the sum total of objective and subjective factors governing the revolutionary remaking of society, from the role and tasks of the working class in this transformation.

p The Right and “Left” revisionists deny the leading role of the working class in the revolutionary process, charging that it is incapable of waging a revolutionary struggle, that it has lost its revolutionary traditions and spirit. On this basis they try to belittle the role played by the Communist Party in the struggle of the working class and in the building of the new society, and demand that it yield its place to various kinds of associations.

p The experience of the working-class struggle in all countries has borne out the key thesis of Marxism-Leninism that the working class cannot fulfil its historic mission without having its own militant revolutionary MarxistLeninist Party. The Communist Party enables the working class to unite, become organised and implement its leading role in the revolution and in the building of a socialist society. Through the Communist Party the working class provides society with political leadership and unites all the working people in their struggle for their vital interests, for 125 the further development of mature socialism and its growth into communism.

p The Communist Party formulates the aim of social development, which expresses the basic interests of the people and becomes their own aim. The governing Party undertakes the responsibility for the attainment of this aim. It is responsible for the way in which the country develops and for what has been done toward the attainment of the set aim.

The Communist Party’s leading role in Soviet society and the growth of that role under developed socialism and during the building of communism are determined by the complexity of the tasks involved in the practical building of a classless society, by the steady enhancement of the significance of a scientific policy under the conditions created by the scientific and technological revolution, by the need for bringing to light and making comprehensive use of all the advantages of a developed socialist society, and by the international significance of communist construction that is proceeding in a situation marked by the struggle between socialism and capitalism.