The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard
The late Prince Kropotkin stated at the outset of the Russian revolution: "The Bolsheviks are not what the Western workers think they are". He was correct. The Western workers thought them to be Socialists: they were mistaken.
Socialism is the noblest cause that ever appealed to the world or to man; the Bolsheviks defamed those who would not accept their leadership and have dragged the working-class movement into the sewers of opportunism and corruption: they used their organisation, the Communist Party, as a means of enabling them to influence the Labour movement of the Western world in the interests of Soviet Russia: the Communist Party became the foreign office of the bureaucracy of the Kremlin, and now. under the dictatorship of Czar Stalin, functions as the ruthless tool of imperialism.
The late Prince Kropotkin stated at the outset of the Russian revolution: "The Bolsheviks are not what the Western workers think they are". He was correct. The Western workers thought them to be Socialists: they were mistaken.
Socialism is the noblest cause that ever appealed to the world or to man; the Bolsheviks defamed those who would not accept their leadership and have dragged the working-class movement into the sewers of opportunism and corruption: they used their organisation, the Communist Party, as a means of enabling them to influence the Labour movement of the Western world in the interests of Soviet Russia: the Communist Party became the foreign office of the bureaucracy of the Kremlin, and now. under the dictatorship of Czar Stalin, functions as the ruthless tool of imperialism.
[From the Socialist Standard. April 1940.]
No comments:
Post a Comment