FIRST COMMENTS ON THE XXIst CONGRESS OF THE CPSU
Editorial Notes
As we go to press, the complete texts of the reports, speeches, and resolutions of the XXIst Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union have not yet been issued. But its general meaning is already clear. The "destalinization" begun by the XXth Congress will be continued in a whole series of fields, except that of free ideological and political expression, which would bring the bureaucracy directly into question.
The XXIst Congress completes Khrushchev's victory over the Stalinist wing, strictly so called, of the Communist Party and Soviet bureaucracy. Khrushchev, spokesman for that stratum of the bureaucracy that derives its privileges from the position it holds in the party apparatus, is consolidating his power by making a more direct appeal than ever to the masses. In addition to the material and social promises contained in the SevenYear Plan in the fields of consumption, housing, and the length of the working week, special stress was laid by several speakers on the return to "socialist legality."
The speeches of Mikoyan and Shelepin, among others, as well as the formulæ of the final resolution of the congress, deserve on these grounds a particular attention. Mikoyan stated that in the US S R there were no longer reprisals for political reasons, and that the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat lies in its organizing functions, in the mobilization of the forces of the whole nation for the building of socialism and communism, while coercion might have been indispensable only at certain stages of development, already left behind.
As for Shelepin, former Secretary of the Communist Youth, and successor to Serov, he assured the congress, and, through it, the country, that all the consequences of the activity of Beria and his acolytes belonged to the past. "Revolutionary legality" was restored, and those who had violated it had been punished. Soviet citizens could henceforth be sure that nothing that might recall that "shameless" period would ever be repeated.
The final resolution of the congress insisted on the need to develop "democracy in all its forms," called on the soviets to strive for such a goal, and affirmed that "numerous functions fulfilled by state organizations must be gradually entrusted to socialist organizations." The "withering away of the state" timidly made its appearance at the congress, all the more necessarily so in that the congress had been given the watchword of the gradual transition "from socialism to communism."
It will be necessary to take up again in detail the theoretical considerations provided on this subject in the reports of both Khrushchev and Suslov, and to compare them with the analyses on the same subject currently developed by the Jugoslavs and the Chinese. Suffice it to say for the moment that what the XXIst Congress calls the transition from socialism, allegedly already achieved in the US S R, to the communist phase, is in reality still only the transition from the lower or preparatory stage for socialism to the stage of socialism properly so called.
The US SR will not begin the tasks of the socialist stage, properly so called - such as Marx and Lenin visualized it in their theoretical writings - until the moment when it surpasses the most developed capitalism in per capita production. Now this stage will be reached, according to the XXIst Congress itself, only about 15 years trom now, ie, halt a century after the victory of the October Revolution, and within the framework of a system of workers' states and of renewed relations with the world market, which currently contribute much to the progress of the Soviet economy. In the matter of the construction of socialism, it is not without interest to observe the remarks made at the by Yudin, attacking the Jugoslav "pseudoMarxists" who "have not understood that socialism cannot be built in a single country detached from all the others, while there already exists a world socialist
Thus the privilege of "socialism in a single country" actually belongs only to the US SR, which was able to profit by it, so to speak, in order to "build its socialism" in the absence of a "world socialist system"!
The attacks made during the congress against both the Jugoslavs and the "anti-party group" are significant of the degree of solidity of the Khrushchev regime. To the extent that Khrushche's policy consists in reforming the sclerotic bureaucratic regime from above in order to infuse it with a greather elasticity, a greater productive efficacy, and to overcome its isolation from the broad masses, he cannot permit that the Jugoslav position, bringing into question the bureaucratic regime as a whole and the existence of the bureaucracy, should be taken into consideration. The attacks on the other hand against the "anti-party group" have as their purpose to continue to expose the Stalinist wing, properly so called, which, it is evident, is not laying down its arms.
We now know that this group was already an opposition at the XXth Congress and that in June 1957 it was on the point of overturning Khrushchev thanks to its majority position in the Presidium. Furthermore, several indications now permit the affirmation that it is maintaining its resistance to all Khrushchev's reforms. But because of this very fact Khrushchev is obliged to broaden his appeal to the masses by taking responsibility
Foe the policy of conceans not only on tee plane of
and "democracy," but also on the plane of consumption and other material advantages -thing that will not fail to strengthen the self-confidence of the masses and swell the current of demands.
Thus "destalinization," spurred on immediately after the XXth Congress, continues, albeit distortedly, on the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL ideological and political planes, and actually becomes an irresistible and irreversible evolutionary tendency of Soviet society. At a new and relatively not distant stage, the more direct role of the masses will inevitably appear. From this point of view, the message of the XXIst Congress, despite the various bureaucratic limitations and deformations in its analyses, remains heartening.
"anti-party group" underwent a deprivation of the right that it had had to defend its policy at the congress, and two of its representatives were obliged to go through with the ritual "self-criticism.' " But the physical extermination of opponents is no longer in force in the USSR.
On the other hand, the XXIst Congress's message to
9 the Communists and proletarians of the world remains very poor indeed. No serious analysis is made therein of the situation of the Communist and workers' movement in the world, and no fundamental lesson is drawn from the events in France. Empty formulæ calling for unity are not enough to rectify the catastrophic situation of the Stalinist movement in the capitalist countries, which weighs heavily also on the situation of the general workers' movement in these countries.
We shall soon come back to the overall labors of the XXIst Congress, which in its own fashion was no less important in every way than the XXth Congress, whose line it affirmed and developed.