question
1938-1948 ist Revolution, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1973.]
Programme as follows:
orders! Greater equality of wages for all forms of labour!
development of Soviet democracy.
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Positions of the on the national
108 International Marxist Review not permitted to enter the soviets, so now it is necessary to drive the bureaucracy and the new aristocracy out of the soviets. In the soviets there is room only for representatives of the workers, rank-and-file collective farmers, peasants, and Red Army personnel.
Democratization of the soviets is impossible without the legalization of soviet parties. The workers and peasants themselves by their own free vote will indicate what parties they recognize as soviet parties.
A revision of planned economy from top to bottom in the interests of produces and consumers! Factory committees should be returned the right to control production. A democratically organized consumers' cooperative should control the quality and price of products.
Reorganization of the collective farms in accordance with the will and in the interests of those who work there!
The reactionary international policy of the bureaucracy should be replaced by the policy of proletarian internationalism. The complete diplomatic correspondence of the Kremlin should be published. Down with secret diplomacy.
All political trials staged by the Thermidorian bureaucracy should be reviewed in the light of complete publicity and controversial openness and integrity. Only the victorious revolutionary uprising of the oppressed masses can revive the Soviet regime and guarantee its further development toward socialism. There is but one party capable of leading the Soviet masses to insurrection — that party is the Fourth International!
Down with the bureaucratic gang of Cain-Stalin!
Long live Soviet democracy!
Long live the international socialist revolution!
This programme of struggle for the USSR remains in general valid for Russia. The Russian Bolshevik-Leninists will elaborate on this basis specific slogans, corresponding to the actual development of the situation. They will demand above all the immediate withdrawal of the Russian occupying troops from all the occupied countries and the implementation of the democratic right to self-determination, including that of separation for all the national minorities living in the USSR, struggling for Ukrainian, White Russian, Estonian, Lithuanian independent socialist republics. 1957 EXTRACT FROM "Decline and Fall of Stalinism" resolution adopted by the 1957 World Congress of the Fourth International [in Fourth International No 1, Winter 1958, Paris].
The Soviet bureaucracy usurped power under the banner of "socialism in one country"; it is under the banner of true proletarian internationalism based on strict equality between all nations, that the political revolution against the bureaucracy will triumph. The bureaucracy has poisoned the relations among the various workers' states, as well as those among the various nationalities
Positions of the Fourth International 109 inside the USSR, by its brutal Great-Russian chauvinism and its narrow petty-bourgeois prejudices.
The Fourth International condemns the Stalinist conception of the subordination of the interests of the world proletariat to those of the Kremlin bureaucracy as a criterion of proletarian internationalism. It also rejects the centrist anti-Leninist thesis according to which the chauvinism of a great oppressing nation should be condemned in the same way as the nationalism of the small nationalities. While raising the banner of international solidarity everywhere, it makes a clear distinction between Great-Russian (and Great Han) chauvinism, which are unconditionally reactionary, and the nationalism of small nations oppressed by the bureaucracy, which is often only a deformation of the just revolt of the masses against the national oppression they suffered, and that can in no way modify the objectively progressive nature of their struggle for emancipation.
That is why the Fourth International defends the slogan of the independent and sovereign Soviet Socialist Republics of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, while at the same time advocating the confederation of all these workers' states on a strict basis of equality, in one or several democratic federations of workers' states.
A democratic workers' state will educate the workers and youth in a spirit of complete respect for the cultural personality of all peoples, for whom it will ensure an unlimited development. It will untiringly combat any manifestation of chauvinism, national or racial hatred, antisemitism, etc. It will try to increase whenever possible the solidarity, interest, and conscious participation of the workers of the workers' states in the struggles of every country throughout the world.
Any nationalistic tendency towards the subordination of the interests of the international revolution to the defence of the workers' state, however important and progressive be this state, is always a clear sign of bureaucratic deformation. 1974 EXTRACT FROM "General Political Resolution" adopted by the 1974 World Congress of the Fourth International [in "World Congress of the Fourth International", Intercontinental Press, December 23, 1974, New York].
In the Soviet Union, where nearly half the population is non-Russian, the
national question continues to represent a deep and explosive contradiction, as the riots in Lithuania in 1972 indicate. The national movements in the
USSR involve nations that are in different stages of development, have radically different pasts, put forward quite different demands, and vary no less in
In Ukraine and the Baltic republics (the most developed non-Russian republics) the past decade has witnessed the rise of a powerful opposition that includes industrial and agricultural workers in its ranks. The various currents that make up this opposition have put forward demands for democratic self-government in the republics, for the restoration of their national languages, for an end to Great Russian chauvinism, and for independent socialist
The struggle to re-establish Leninist norms on the national question is a central task of the political revolution. The demand for self-determination for the non-Russian nationalities, and in particular the demand for an independent socialist Ukraine is a democratic demand that deserves the support of all
EXTRACT FROM World Political Resolution adopted by the 1979 World
Congress of the Fourth International [in "1979 World Congress of the Fourth
International", Intercontinental Press combined with Inprecor, January
A similar striking development is the more and more prominent role the resistance to national oppression and resentment against national inequalities is playing in the general struggle to break out of the straightjacket of bureaucratic rule. In the Soviet Union, in which barely 50 per cent of the population considers itself Russian, the activities of the Ukrainians, the Baltic nationalities, the nationalities of Caucasus, the Tatars, and the Soviet Jews, for instance, are particularly troublesome to the Stalinist bureaucrats, since they continually raise issues associated with the right to national self- determination. In Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, demonstrations in
April 1978 over the question over the question of national language rights
Moscow's attempt to remove language guarantees shows the intent of the bureaucracy to eliminate all vestiges of the Leninist nationality policy. It also shows that memory of this policy exists on such a broad scale that it cannot
110 International Marxist Review republics.
revolutionary socialists.
1979
1980, New York].
strength than in their political character.
won some concessions from the government.
Positions of the Fourth International 111 be eliminated without great struggles, and that battles in, this field can erupt quickly and win concessions.
Similarly in the East European countries, the issue of national liberation has become acute under the oppressive economic and military domination of the Kremlin, a striking example being the struggle of the Czechoslovak people for withdrawal of the Warsaw Pact troops. In Eastern Europe, Stalinist dictatorship and the practice of "building socialism in one country" have not only blocked solution of the national problem but made it more explosive.
Proletarian revolutionists recognize that struggles over the national question are a central part of the overall struggle against bureaucratic misrule and for workers democracy. The question is not merely how the political revolution will advance the fight against national oppression, but even more decisively, how national struggles can help advance the political revolution.
The Fourth International defends the slogan of the independent and really sovereign Soviet Socialist Republics of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria and Ukraine, while at the same time advocating the confederation of all these workers' state on a strict basis of equality, in one or several democratic federations of workers' states.