REHABILITATIONS" IN PREPARATION IN THE SOVIET UNION?
In its February 10 issue, Le Drapeau Rouge (The Red Flag], daily newspaper of the Belgian Communist party, published an intriguing item from its Moscow correspondent: "“, . . according to Pravda, the repression which struck Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky and other comrades was absolutely unjustified," =
Careful search of preceding issues of Pravda reveals nothing of the kind. Had we missed a sentence indicating such a judgment it could scarcely have likewise been overlooked by the many Western, Yugoslav and Chinese specialists who go through Pravda each day with a fine=-tooth comb, mo
_ It is,probable, therefore, that the correspondent of Le Drapeau ROURes who is well known for his "liberal" Khrushchevite views, either repeated a rumor circulating among the ranks of the bureaucracy in Moscow, or obligingly ran up a trial balloon for the "ideow logical" department .of-the Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union [cpsu]. -
The item, however, falls into a certain context.
First of all, Khrushchev has been constantly increasing the numbér of rehabilitations of old Bolsheviks murdered in the "Yezhov period" [the years when Stalin's murderous purgws reached their height]. When the rehabilitations began, after the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, they were limited principally to leaders of the Stalinist faction in the Central Committee whom Stalin eliminated as vestiges of the Bolshevik party of Lenin's time (persons like Yenukidze, Yaroslavsky, Rudzutak, Postychev, and others), and military figures murdered by Stalin (Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Blucher, etc.). In the recent period, old Bolsheviks who were never direct associates of Stalin == the diplomat Krestinsky and the old Ukrainian Bolshevik leader Skrypnik, are examples -~- have been rehabilitated.
In addition, the first showing February 12 of The Blue Notebook by the well-known movie director Kazakievitch, created something of a sensation in Moscow. The movie is about the differences between Lenin on the one hand and Zinoviev and Kamenev on the other on the eve of the October Revolution when Lenin urged organization of an insurrection and Zinoviev and Kamenev strongly opposed it.
The movie does not present the two old Bolshevik leaders as
"traitors," or "enemies of Bolshevism," as is.called for by the Stalinist stereotype. On the contrary, the movie stresses their friendly relations with Lenin. The title of the production refers to the blue notebook which Lenin used-in writing State and Revolution and which he asked Kamenev to edit in case anything happened to him. The request was proof of the great confidence Lenin had in Kamenev, who, incidentally, was Trotsky's brother-in-law.* -In the movie, Kamenev is shown handing Lenin the notebook after locating it in Stockholm,
It is quite possible that remarks like the one quoted by the Moscow correspondent of Le Drapeau Rouge were made by high Soviet officials in talking abou @ preview of The Blue Notebook,. The film obviously does not conform to the official party. line still maintained in the latest version of the History of the CPSU (which is still silent about the Moscow frame~up trials); namely, that Zinoviev and Kamenev were "onemies of Leninism" and "enemies of the party."
In any case, the problem of what to do about the old Bolsheviks who were victims of the Stalinist terror in the thirties presents Khrushchev and the present leaders of the Soviet bureaucracy with a sharp dilenma,
They have denounced Stalin and Stalinism, begun to open the archives, to publish minutes of Central Committee meetings and party and Soviet congresses after the October Revolution, to permit a certain amount of free research and discussion about party history. It thus becomes difficult to maintain even traces of the slanders which the Stalin school of falsification used to besmirch the memory of those who led the party during and after the Revolution,
But if these falsifications are purged from the history books, and the old Bolsheviks are rehabilitated, this cannot be done without at the same time rehabilitating Leon Trotsky and allowing at least an objective examination of the political positions defended by Trotsky and the Left Opposition against Stalin and his faction in the CPSU, This would prove devastating to the prestige of Stalin's licutoenants
*renints letter to Kamenev, first published in 1924, was suppressed in the editions of the "complete works" of Lenin published under Stalin, being included. only after the dictator!s death (volume 36 of the fourth edition), The letter reads as follows: "To Comrade Kamenev. Between us == if I am liquidated, I ask you to publish my notebook: ‘Marxism and the State! (it was Joft in Stockholm). It is a notebook with a blue cover, All the quotations from Marx and Engels, as well as those of Kautsky against Pannekoek, are collected here, There is also a series of remarks, of notes, of formulations, I think that the work can be published within a week, I consider this important, because not only Plekhanov but also Kautsky have confused everything. Conditions: all this must remain absolutely between ourselves,"
~The letter is not dated, but the Russian editors assume that it was written before July 5 (18), 1917.
during the purges -- several of whom are leaders today of the ruling layer of the bureaucracy. Among these are Khrushchev himself, who conducted the purge in Moscow, Suslov who played a prominent part in the purge in Leningrad, and Mikoyan, who kept silent while all his former comrades were murdered, although he knew the truth,
And, of first-rate political importance, it would lead the vanguard of the Soviet youth to the conclusion that Trotsky and the Left Opposition were right after allt
: How to meet this dilemma? Various expedients are open to the leaders of the Soviet bureaucracy, none of which can prove durable, _ They have tried to stop the rehabilitations half way ~- rehabilitating only Stalinists and not genuine opponents of Stalin. They may now go further, rehabilitating the Bukharin. and Zinoviev factions, but not the "hard-core" Trotskyists.or Trotsky himself, At a certain point they may even concede partial rehabilitation of Trotsky, attempting to set up a dividing line between his activities before and after he was exiled from the Soviet Union by Stalin; above all insisting on slanderous characterizations of Trotsky!s supporters today. Something like this may have been implied in the venomous campaign opened against the Fourth International last year in Izvestia, Communist, and other Khrushchevist journals,
Such expedients are only stopgaps. Once it is admitted that Stalin falsified Soviet history, that he murdered innocent Bolsheviks, that the Moscow trials were frame-ups, it is impossible to stop half way. The logic of such admissions is to strengthen the clamor of young Communists for a general re-evaluation of everything in the official Stalinist history books concerning the post-Lenin period in the Soviet Union.
This rexevaluation cannot be blocked from including Trotsky, with whom Zinoviev and Kamenev were closely associated in the leadership of the United Left Opposition in 1926-27, in which Lenin's widow, Krup=skaya, also participated. It cannot be blocked from making an objective examination of Trotsky's ideas and program, And that will have a shattering effect on the bureaucracyts capacity to control the thoughts of the younger generation. _. ae re
It is fear of these consequences that has made the bureaucracy proceed so slowly and hesitantly with "de-Stalinization," The promise to "erect a monument to the victims of Stalin's crimes," made in 1961 at the Twenty-second Congress, has not yet been kept, Hight years after the denunciation of the "personality cult," Zinoviev and © Kamenev have not yet been officially rehabisitated. .Eleven years after Stalints death, the infamous Moscow feials have not yet been
officially repudiated. <A striking indication of the true feelings of the Khrushchev bureaucracy was their generosity in arranging to bring Trotsky's assassin, on his release from prison in Mexico, to Prague from where he was presumably flown to Moscow, NL
But there is no escape from the dilemma in which the bureaucracy
was trapped when, under the pressure of the masses and to strengthen his rule, Khrushchev initiated "de-Stalinization." History is moving forward, "af slowly, yet inexorably. Sooner than some think, the very violence of the persecution vented on Trotsky and his followers may become the greatest asset of the Trotskyist movement in the eyes of the Soviet youth,
INDONESIAN CP