Proper Gander: Being informed about informers (2025)

The Proper Gander column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was probably a coincidence that a BBC documentary about the tyrannical Russian state was released on the same day as the government’s Defence Secretary John Healey announced increased investment to move the UK to ‘war-fighting readiness’, especially against Russia. While its timing gave the programme a propagandist tinge, it doesn’t consider how the Russian state may be a danger to those of us in the UK, but rather how it oppresses those living under its rule.

The threat of being ‘denounced’, to the extent it exists in Russia, isn’t something easy to empathise with elsewhere. Aspects of what it means to be ‘denounced’ are found in any country, as all have legislation covering what politically-motivated acts are deemed unacceptable, and anyone risks the consequences for their employment, for instance, of being publicly ‘shamed’. However, in Russia, the laws are especially strict and the state monitors dissent from its decrees closely, and so to be ‘denounced’ for transgressing them can mean particularly harsh punishments. One way which supposedly subversive activities come to the state’s attention is through informers. The two featured in the documentary Informers: Hunting The Enemy Within aren’t employed in this role, which they’ve taken on like an enthusiastically-pursued hobby. They gather up information online and in the media about would-be dissenters and often alongside targeting them directly, notify the state regulator, who may then further investigate and prosecute.

One of the informers is Valentin Botzvin, an armed forces veteran who has become ‘self-appointed guardians of Russia’s soul’, as the narration puts it. He targets those who he says ‘are forming an anti-peace system with different values’, including Alisa Gorshenina, who contributed to the design for a video by activist band Pussy Riot. The other snout featured in the programme – Anna Korobkova – is more prolific, claiming to have written 1,000 denouncements. One victim was Alexandra Arkhipova, a social anthropologist at a Russian university. In 2022, Anna sent Alexandra’s employers a letter about her ‘immoral act’ discrediting the military through her academic work, and some of her friends and colleagues were also similarly accused. Alexandra fled to France and began investigating Anna’s real identity, such as by looking for patterns in their style of writing and comparing them with other texts. The camera used for photos on Anna’s Wikipedia entry was tracked to a man called Ivan Abaturov. Alexandra found a written denouncement signed by Ivan which resembled one sent by Anna, and both were traced back to one computer IP address. When challenged, Ivan replied denying he was Anna, in the same writing style. He is described as having been a troublemaker while at university and as himself has posted on social media talking about denouncements.

While revealing ‘Anna”s true identity gives the documentary a narrative and an air of espionage, Valentin the veteran is quite open about informing. As a member of Russia’s military, he had already developed a loyalty to the state, which no doubt gave him the drive to snitch in his retirement. That there are younger people, such as Ivan, who are as keen to denounce others shows how this creed has permeated out. While they may sincerely believe that what they are doing is morally right, this is because they have adopted a belief system which just so happens to align with that of the ruling elite, even if it is against their class interests.

The mindset of those who are at risk of being informed upon is different. As Alisa explains, the threat of retribution for expressing nonconformist views makes her fearful and paranoid. Alexandra felt she had to leave Russia, as did Noize MC, a rapper who was being monitored for his ‘sharp, socially conscious lyrics’, with some of his gigs being cancelled by officials. Alisa chose to remain in Russia, saying that to leave would be to have something else taken away from her, along with her rights. A caption at the end of the programme says that she was arrested, detained and found guilty of displaying an ‘extremist’ rainbow emoji and insulting the army, for which she was fined. We’re also told that by the end of 2024, almost 3,000 critics of the war against Ukraine were being prosecuted, while almost 300,000 denunciations were registered with the state regulator in the first year of the conflict.

When a state criminalises disagreement with its ideology, this shows a weakness in any arguments for it. But this weakness is eclipsed by the strength wielded by the state through its legislation and punishments. These are applied randomly in Russia, as Alexandra explains, in that one person may avoid any sanctions for writing a provocative social media post, while others may get prosecuted just for clicking ‘like’ on one. This may be due to gaps in the resources available to the state, but as Alexandra says, this inconsistency contributes to the threat. For those who question the way they have to live, anxiety about being denounced adds pressure to self-censor. Music acts such as Pussy Riot and Noize MC bravely attempt to express some anti-state sentiment, which represents a little optimism. Unfortunately, at the moment, state oppression and limited class consciousness would make any movement for genuine change in Russia difficult to establish.

According to its iPlayer page, the BBC Eye strand offers ‘high-impact investigations and in-depth reporting from our award-winning World Service team’. With a running time of only 22 minutes, there’s a limit to how in-depth Informers: Hunting The Enemy Within could be. So the documentary doesn’t consider the context much beyond saying that denouncers threaten to ‘bring back ghosts from Russia’s past’, particularly during Stalin’s rule. Throughout the decades between then and now, the state has remained, and even when it has been less autocratic it has still enforced and engendered acceptance to maintain itself. These ‘ghosts’ may now be more active, but they’ve always haunted those living under the regime.

Mike Foster

Bird’s Eye View: Memory hole (2022)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the June 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Memory hole

‘The Russian Education Ministry has announced plans that will require children as young as seven to study history, as part of a wider push to promote “patriotic” education amid the war in Ukraine. “Historical education will begin in schools from the first grade,” Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov said at the opening of an exhibition called Everyday Nazism which is due to be shown at a nationwide schools forum, The Power is in the Truth. “[In our teaching of history], we will never allow it [to be written] that we somehow treated other nations – our fraternal nations of Ukraine and Belarus – poorly. We will do everything in our power so that historical memory is preserved.” The plans will lower the age of children taking compulsory history lessons by three years, and will see historical education incorporated into existing parts of the school curriculum. Kravtsov also said that from Sept. 1, schools will start each week by singing the Russian national anthem and raising the Russian flag’ (themoscowtimes.com, 19 April).

As George Orwell warned, those who control the past can control the present. Putin long ago joined the ranks of dictators for whom ‘yesterday’s weather can be changed by decree’ —a power Orwell attributed in 1942 to Franco, Hitler and Stalin. If an event in the past is no longer regarded as useful to the authorities all reference to it is destroyed. A people who cannot remember where they used to be are in no position to challenge where they are now. Historically controlled, the present is something that workers come to accept as an unquestionable normality. Orwell was not merely inventing nightmares. In Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia the deletion from the record of history of disruptive facts was a carefully organised campaign.

Doublethink

‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce… Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living’ (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx, 1852, bit.ly/3KcVZCm).

Mazda Majidi and Derek Ford ‘s recent article titled ‘Clarifying and inspiring revolution for 130 years: Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme‘ (hamptonthink.org, 2 April) is both tragic and farcical. The Gotha programme was drawn up to unite the two sections of the German working class movement, the General Association of German Workers, and the Social Democratic Workers’ Party. They combined to form the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany at the Gotha Congress in 1875. The Critique of the Gotha Programme consisted of marginal comments made by Marx on the draft of this party programme. The Critique remains popular among those who worship certain dead dictators or their modern counterparts because Marx refers to a transitional period between capitalism and communism (socialism) and to another between an early and a later stage of communism during which there will not be full distribution according to needs. As the authors remark, the ‘..Critique was a key resource for Lenin’s study and publication of The State and Revolution. Lenin expanded on the transition between the first and second stages of communism and justified the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ But as Marx notes in Critique just after dealing with the transitional period ‘… to force on our Party again, as dogmas, ideas which in a certain period had some meaning but now have become obsolete verbal rubbish’ (bit.ly/38nKn2s) seems apt for other notions which we would do well throw in the dusbin of history and are found aplenty, alas, on www.hamptonthink.org, including imperialism, Marxism-Leninism, national liberation, socialism with Chinese, Cuban, etc characteristics, and workers’ states.

Big Brother

‘Future society will be socialist society. This also means that with the abolition of exploitation, commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed—there will be only free workers… Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no need also for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power’ (Anarchism or Socialism? 1906, bit.ly/3MqEIHv).

Ironically, the author of this piece would thirty years later, in a complete volte-face, declare the USSR to be socialist. That same year, on the 28th August, Pravda proclaimed him divine: ‘O Great Stalin, O Leader of the Peoples,Thou who didst give birth to man, Thou who didst make fertile the earth, Thou who dost rejuvenate the Centuries, Thou who givest blossom to the spring… ‘ And a mere mortal observed:

‘There are in the USSR privileged and exploited classes, dominant classes and subject classes. Between them the standard of living is sharply separated. The classes of travel on the railways correspond exactly to the social classes; similarly with ships, restaurants, theatres, shops, and with houses; for one group palaces in pleasant neighbourhoods, for the others wooden barracks alongside tool stores and oily machines… It is always the same people who live in the palaces and the same people who live in the barracks. There is no longer private property, there is only one property – State property. But the State no more represents the whole community than under preceding régimes’ (What the Russian Revolution Has Become, Robert Guiheneuf, 1936).

And today, ‘Russian elites and oligarchs are probably some of the best in the world at hiding their wealth…’ (washingtonpost.com, 11 April).

Anti-Putin Protests (2021)

From the March 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s clear who they’re against, but what are they for?

What is the significance of the current Russian protests against the Putin regime? Western media have called them ‘unprecedented’. That is not so.

Mass protests are a frequent occurrence in Russia, though rarely do they attract much attention abroad. Many give voice to local grievances. This January, for example, residents of Ufa protested (successfully) against a big increase in heating charges. In 2019 there were mass meetings in Moscow against an urban renewal programme that threatened people’s homes – meetings larger (so a Russian correspondent tells me) than the anti-Putin protest. However, nationwide protest movements also occur, such as that in 2018 against a ‘reform’ to raise by five years the age at which people can start to draw a pension (43 percent of Russian men die before reaching the new retirement age).

Even focusing solely on protests organised by the anti-Putin opposition, today’s protests are similar in size and geographical scope to those that began in December 2011 and continued into 2012. Those protests were not on a large enough scale to have any chance of toppling the regime, nor are the current protests. They mobilise a much smaller proportion of the population (1 percent at most) than the opposition demonstrations in Belarus did last October (about 5 percent).

Enormous power potential

The Putin regime is not going to collapse any time soon. Its power potential is still enormous. It retains full control over TV – still the medium on which most Russians rely for information – and print media. Oligarchs connected with the regime (independent ones are no longer tolerated) own most of Russia’s natural resources and heavy industry. The state bureaucracy and armed forces remain loyal.

True, the regime has reason to be concerned about a gradual long-term erosion of popular support. Younger people have access to a wider range of information through the internet and social media. Tens of millions have watched the opposition video Putin’s Palace, about the president’s luxurious residence on the Black Sea coast.

Polls show that Putin’s approval rating has fallen over the last couple of years to about 60 percent, which is considered too low. This too, however, is not unprecedented. It hovered just above 60 percent from 2011 to 2013. Then in 2014 confrontation with Ukraine bumped it up to 85—90 percent. The annexation of Crimea was especially popular. No doubt the remedy of ‘a short victorious war’ – first recommended as a means of ‘averting revolution’ by Tsarist interior minister Vyacheslav Plehve in 1904 – can be applied yet again.

Nature of the ‘Putin regime’

But what is this ‘regime’ that Putin has established in Russia?

The Putin regime is neither a democracy nor an out-and-out dictatorship. It is officially described as a ‘guided democracy’. It can be represented as three concentric circles:

• at the core: Putin, his presidential administration and government, and his loyal ‘party of power’ – United Russia (the opposition calls it ‘the party of crooks and thieves’);
• the ‘intra-system opposition’ of parties that accept Putin as president but advocate their own policies within permitted limits. There are at present three such parties: the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), Zhirinovsky’s ultra-nationalist Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and Just Russia, a ‘social-democratic’ reform party that belongs to the Socialist International;
• the ‘extra-system opposition’ of parties and groups that oppose Putin, including Navalny’s ‘Russia of the Future’ (formerly the Party of Progress). Refused registration, they operate under duress and are unable to contest elections.

The term ‘opposition’ is therefore ambiguous. In its broad sense it refers to the intra-system as well as the extra-system opposition, in its narrow sense only to the extra-system opposition.

Uniting the opposition

The political situation in Russia has changed in one significant respect. Nine years ago the extra-system opposition was deeply divided, as we reported in the Socialist Standard (Material World, July 2012). The three main components of the movement were Russian nationalists, Western-type liberals, and leftists of various sorts. Opposition rallies were enlivened by verbal and even physical clashes between nationalists on one side and anarchists or gay activists on the other.

These internal conflicts have been resolved, mainly due to the rising influence of so-called ‘national democrats’ who claim to combine Russian nationalism with Western-type liberalism. Alexei Navalny has played a central role in this development. Leftists have been marginalized within the opposition or have abandoned the movement. A group of anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists recently issued a declaration in which they renounce:

  ‘all participation in the political spectacles organised by supporters of the right-wing populist Navalny, sadly renowned for his openly nationalist attacks on immigrants, people from the Caucasus and Jews. Whatever excuses or ‘explanations’ may be offered, joining in their demonstrations would mean turning into an appendage of one of the political gangs waging a dirty and unprincipled struggle for power’ (LINK).

Since 2019 Navalny has urged his supporters to vote ‘smart’ – that is, tactically – for the strongest opposition candidate standing in any election, even if that candidate is a ‘communist’ or one of Zhirinovsky’s people. Tactical voting will tend to strengthen the oppositional character of the intra-system opposition and narrow the gap between the intra-system and extra-system oppositions.

Who is Navalny?

Katya Kazbek in The Grayzone says that Navalny is ‘first and foremost … an investigative journalist’ who exposes corruption within the Putin regime. This is certainly the centrepiece of his public activity. However, the investigations on which the anti-corruption campaign relies have for some time been conducted mainly by researchers at his Foundation for Fighting Corruption rather than by Navalny personally. Is fighting corruption an end in itself for Navalny? Or is it an instrument in his bid for power? It is hard to think of any other theme that would be equally effective in bringing diverse elements together in a broad coalition. Who, after all, is in favour of corruption?

This does not mean we can assume that a regime led by Navalny would prove any less corrupt once he came to power. Navalny has himself been convicted for fraud in his business dealings, though he calls the charges ‘frame-ups’.

Navalny is not only a public speaker but also a prolific blogger and video star who exploits social media to the full. He has a characteristic ironic style and sense of humour.

What does Navalny stand for?

The cruel treatment of Navalny by the Putin regime has won him much sympathy and admiration. Nevertheless, this should not bias our view of what he stands for.

Navalny’s constitutional proposals envision transition from a ‘super-presidential’ to a ‘presidential-parliamentary republic’ with an independent judiciary. His economic platform appeals to capitalists who lack close connections to the regime. He undertakes to transform the existing ‘twisted’ and ‘authoritarian-oligarchic model’ of ‘crony capitalism’ into a fully competitive model of capitalism with a level playing field and a strong high-tech sector. He promises to restart economic growth, ‘create a well-functioning pension system’, move towards an all-volunteer military, reduce crime, improve roads, transfer authority and taxes to the regions and municipalities, and stay out of wars abroad.

Not all of Navalny’s slogans seem compatible. For example, is it really possible to ‘fight corruption’ but also ‘trust people’? And how will he fund all his programmes, including a doubling of state spending on healthcare and education, and at the same time cut taxes? He says he will do this by reducing spending on the security services and ‘bureaucracy’ – but that is easier said than done. Although he criticizes the extreme inequality of wealth in Russia, he does not back Just Russia’s demand to replace the current flat-rate income tax (13 percent) by a progressive tax (though he does want to make the property tax more progressive).

Closer examination suggests that not all of Navalny’s promises should be taken at face value. He highlights a promise to establish a minimum monthly wage of 25,000 rubles (£242.50 or $325), but further on we learn that this is a goal to be achieved by stages, the pace to be set by regional governments (LINK).

It is difficult to assess Navalny because he is such a master at projecting different versions of himself at different audiences (an essential skill of any good politician). Facing west, he poses as a champion of human rights and condemns Russia’s ‘aggression against Ukraine’. But he is unwilling to give Crimea back to Ukraine. And he shares Russian nationalist ideas that militate against full recognition of Ukraine’s sovereignty – the perception of Russians and Ukrainians as constituting a single nation and the concept of a ‘Russian World’ that extends to Slav areas beyond state borders but does not encompass the Northern Caucasus, which he proposes to sever from the Russian Federation.

Dehumanising ethnic minorities

Most alarming, however, is the internal aspect of Navalny’s nationalism. Of course, the Putin regime itself is nationalistic. But Putin’s is a state nationalism. Navalny’s is primarily an ethnic Russian nationalism. He demands the full assimilation of ethnic minorities: those who wish to live in Russia ‘must become (ethnically) Russian in the full sense’.

Navalny’s main targets have been the Moslem immigrants from Central Asia (above all, Tajikistan) and the Caucasus. They originally came to Russia to earn some money and return home, but increasing numbers have settled in Russian cities, where they have been allowed to build mosques. Even though they do the hardest and dirtiest jobs, they are widely hated and abused. Their position resembles that of Hispanic immigrants in the United States. Like Trump, Navalny has taken full advantage of anti-immigrant sentiment.

In April 2017 Shaun Walker interviewed Navalny for The Guardian. To quote Walker:

  ‘Several years ago, he released a number of disturbing videos, including one in which he is dressed as a dentist, complaining that tooth cavities ruin healthy teeth, as clips of migrant workers are shown. In another video, he speaks out in favour of relaxing gun controls, in a monologue that appears to compare migrants to cockroaches.

I ask him if he regrets those videos now, and he’s unapologetic. He sees it as a strength that he can speak to both liberals and nationalists. But comparing migrants to cockroaches? ‘That was artistic license,’ he says. So there’s nothing at all from those videos or that period that he regrets? ‘No,’ he says again, firmly’.

Another example of Navalny’s dehumanization of ethnic ‘enemies’ came during the 2008 invasion of Georgia, which he enthusiastically supported. Indulging in a play on words, Navalny called Georgians (gruziny) rodents (grizuny).

Russia in Western media

We can conclude by agreeing with the remarks of Katya Kazbek concerning how Western media cover events in Russia (as well as in other countries regarded as adversaries of the West). ‘The overwhelming majority of Western journalists,’ she observes, ‘are busy communicating their own narrative, which does not have anything to do with the real situation on the ground’ but ‘too often reflects the opinions’ of NATO governments. It is therefore ‘misleading and dangerous to judge Russia by what you hear most often about it’.

Stefan

The Real Russia. (1939)

Book Review from the March 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Appalling ignorance as to actual conditions in Russia still obtains. “Communists” lying at home, and ruthless censorship in Russia, are the two chief factors responsible for this deplorable state of affairs. Added to these main factors is the fear on the part of Labour and “Left" generally of offending a section which might prove useful for assistance in vote-catching on “Popular Front" slogans.

“Yvon" has followed up his “What has become of the Russian Revolution?” with “L'U.R.S.S. telle qu’elle est" (“The Real Russia”; Workers' Bookshop; 28 francs). No translation is available yet, but some salient facts given by this worker, who started out eleven years ago as a high enthusiast, and ended in complete disillusionment, warrant immediate presentation; it is proposed to quote mainly from Russian official sources, as given by the author in his book.

It would be a pity, however, to omit reference to André Gide’s brilliant preface, and here we will endeavour to put over some of his points; it may be necessary to remind readers that Gide himself was once an enthusiastic admirer of Stalin & Co.

Gide opens significantly: “No solid construction can be based upon a LIE." His general reaction to the mass of facts adduced to Yvon (and other independent observers) is striking—it may not be literally true that “The worker in Russia to-day is in an unhappier position than ever before; he is less free than in any other country in the wide world," but, according to Yvon, the future general verdict cannot fail to fall far short of that of the distinguished French economist: “Time will show what plaited cunning hides."

The slight sketch of Yvon’s experience in Russia is highly interesting—his contacts were wide ranging from labour in a mine to a responsible position in a big industrial concern. It was while foregathering with the Big Pots (Kamenef, for instance), in one of the sumptuous residences which a grateful country gives its “giants and heroes" (enough to make Pollitt & Co.’s mouth water!), that, to quote Gide: “Yvon learnt much —in quite a different sense from his instruction from living among the workers—his first faith began to waver."

Fortunately for the subject of Gide’s short sketch, he had been wise enough to refuse military service, retaining his French nationality, but trouble was added to his growing doubts in the form of a Russian wife and, later, of a child. The two latter were Soviet subjects. Hard enough to escape as a French subject—“We know, from other similar experiences, the almost insurmountable difficulties of escaping from the foul web spun by G.P.U. spiderdom for its unwary erstwhile enthusiastic recruits"—but how to get wife and child beyond frontiers which, essayed without passport, involve death? How, in any case, to circumvent an officialdom where “several of Yvon’s staff, accused of sabotage, disappeared, and the place thereof knew them no more, but certain women took the veil—oh! ever so discreetly—since direct official sanction for sign of mourning was lacking.”

Space forbids recounting the grim struggle for “evasion" (beats Dumas into fits, makes Hugo look colourless), but the hearing of appeal for release made by the girl-wife should be read at once by all who can manage French without too many tears. The atmosphere, the whole conduct of the tribunal, should open the eyes of any who retain illusions as to the nature of this unparalleled ruthless despotism which the Communist Party of this country is subsidised to bolster up.

Gide summarises it in three acts. With fullest apologies for crudity and mauling of. a work of art, here is a synopsis: —

Act 1.—Paternal solicitude on part of “grand inquisiteur": “Where in the wide world can your husband find a better nest than here? In any case, he will long to come back. . . . You do not really wish to accompany him?”
Act 2.—Change of key; solemn warning: “Once your husband has quitted the soil of your fatherland, his light instincts will assert themselves ; his feet on the pavé of the Rue de la Paix, you will be forgotten—” (Only older readers who have sat in the gallery of the Adelphi, or “Surrey,” long years ago will get the full flavour of this act.) “—Bitterly will you regret the land of your birth, your brother, father, sister, friends.”
Act 3.—Loud pedal — after splendid little woman, tear-choked but firm, sticks to her point. Crescendo. The Soviet Pharaoh will drive you out! Strict time-limit. . . . No chance to “Spoil the Egyptians”—Soviet money not even exchangeable for foreign travel. . . . Still, they did get out, by the last available train, deliberate obstacles having been placed in the way.

Says Gide: “I know nothing more sickening than this sad recital."

Yvon’s own comment, at commencement of book (very freely done into English), seems to hit the mark:—

  “Kind distance lends enchantment to the view, But close-ups call for judgments new, Expression strong, perhaps, but surely lawful is final verdict: ‘ *Bloody Awful!' "
   “ Bougrement douloureux."

Red School Tie

Liberal, Labour, “Left" generally (even the I.L.P., whose relatively correct attitude on the recent crisis might deceive the unwary as to their still fundamentally Reformist outlook), class Russia as a “peace-loving" nation. Ponder the following:—

Isvestia (10.9.35) quotes Radek: “I have never yet found a single kiddy, who, when asked whether he would like to join up in the Red Army, did not reply: 'Do we not know the high honour of wearing the school uniform, whose aim and object is to prepare me as a soldier of the Red Army?' " Craftily cunning in “palace” intrigue, the Soviet bureaucrat limps painfully behind Downing Street’s subtle bids for cannon-fodder. Read that sweet youth’s reply again. Does Soviet Communism not only kill its Radeks, but also all sense of humour?

Suffer Little Children

A not uncommon experience on the S.P.G.B. soap-box is to have a “Russia To-Day” photograph waved wildly, with violent demand to show the audience a happy band of children engaged upon some highly cultural task, such as fruit-picking or harvesting (ever had some, sweet reader? Don’t murmur “gardening”; this is a serious topic).

Yvon (p. 243), quoting literally again from the Soviet official sources, “From the age of 12 years, children guilty of theft, wounding, assassination, or attempts thereto, are subject to all penalties provided by the common law.” (Death is one of the penalties.) After 28 years of “Socialism,” a reminder of conditions prevalent in England centuries ago. Yvon caustically heads his paragraph “ Le Paradis des enfants.”

Russia's a Prison

The difficulty of shaking the dust off one’s feet for natives of Russia has been referred to; significant is the attitude of Soviet authorities with regard to sailors. We used to be regaled with tales of bluff, hearty “ A.B.s ” slapping their “comrade” captain on the back, joining in spontaneous bursts of the ”Internationale,” and feeling generally that “everybody’s somebody.” . . . On page 241, light is shed upon one aspect of the Soviet’s strenuous endeavour to stop “desertion.” Every obstacle, including the customary “ Communist ” device of sheer lying, is placed in the way of sailors landing when in a foreign port. Sailors are given to understand that they run serious risk from foreign regulations if they land. And further, “To ask leave from ship is to write one’s self down already as a suspect ” (significant Jacobin word). Well might the Soviet Hamlet of to-day exclaim: “Russia’s a Prison."

“Intourist” Trippers Note

Elaborate precautions (see p. 246) are taken to prevent "Intourist” sheep from straying from the fold. “Certain regions” can be visited only by “authorisation speciale" of the formidable G.P.U. It is safe to assert that very special “authorisation” would be required to visit the concentration camp which a responsible writer has recently asserted contains more "traitors” than all the similar camps in Germany.

Telegrams of “journalists" (a wide term) “are always censored by a Special Bureau of the Foreign Office.”

Bread and Wages

It is notoriously difficult to estimate standards of living; no one would deny that Stalin & Co., with limousines, bed and board of “3 star” hotel level, are better off than before 1907. Statistics are too often a Mills' bomb in the hand of the unskilful user, but just one humble fact, from Soviet official figures, quoted by Yvon on p. 215:

The monthly salary of an ”average” worker before the war was 30 roubles; in 1937 it was 220 roubles, 7 times increase. Sounds good! But, the price of a kilo loaf before the war was 5 kopecks; in 1937, the same loaf cost 85 kopecks!! Not so good. 17 times as much for an article which stands in all economic books as a good general index of other levels of price. And, note well, the “loaf” of the “average” worker is “seigle,” in short, black rye bread (the “average” worker can afford nothing better).

A final word on wages. The range is extreme. 110 roubles (per month) for the “worker”; 1,000 for high officials; 20 to 30 thousand in a few cases. Did not the Saint Lenin, whose mortal remains (some of them) dominate the Red Square, proclaim in 1917: “The standard of living of the highest State official should not exceed the average wage of a good worker” ?

Alas, poor Yorick!

Reginald.

Changing Russia (1939)

From the November 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

The repercussions of the Soviet-German Pact on Communist influence have been far-reaching. Mr. H. N. Brailsford, an old supporter of the Soviet Government, urged his friends to restrain the “bitterness in their hearts” (Reynolds's, October 8th, 1937). We suspect that Mr. Brailsford’s restraint is governed by the hope that Russia will yet side with the Allied Powers.

Mr. Louis Fischer, in an article in Reynolds's (October 1st, 1939) feels no urge for such restraint. He is an American journalist, has spent many years in Russia and, until now, has been regarded as one of the staunchest and ablest supporters of the Russian Government outside of Russia. After enumerating facts which are now familiar as history, Louis Fischer says:--

   I see two chief reasons for Russia’s new foreign expansion : (1) Domestic difficulties, and (2) the revival of Russian nationalism.
   Several years ago. Stalin started out to build Socialism in one country. But Socialism is a travesty without pants and without freedom. The supply of consumers’ goods (except food) and of housing in Russia is most inadequate, and little progress has been made during the last three years.
   The nation was ready to sacrifice a great deal, and it did, for the sake of the better life that had been promised. But this is the twenty-second year of the revolution, and people get tired investing in a future which never arrives. They grow especially depressed when they see stagnation instead of improvement.
   The objective truth of the Soviet goods shortage is the long queues outside town and village shops, and speculation.
   Neither quantitatively nor qualitatively are the needs of the Soviet population being met.

The New Soviet Constitution of 1936 Fischer interprets as an attempt to meet the “yearning of the population met with disappointment—the yearning for freedom.”

Hopes were dashed, however, and “the purge continued to every nook of the vast Soviet Union, and hundreds of thousands suffered. . . .  A deadly fear was injected into those whom the authorities did not molest.”

And of the Army: —

   In 1936, Moscow created the rank of Army Marshal and raised five men to that rank : Voroshilov, Tukhachevsky, Yegorov, Bluecher and Budenny. Children treasured a widely published photograph of these five national heroes. Before long, the children had to cut off the face of Tukhachevsky. Executed as a traitor. In a short time Yegorov’s features had to be eliminated. And then Bluecher’s.

And journalists: —

  Hundreds of journalists, writers, professors, politicians and outstanding Communists who had enjoyed general confidence, turned out, according to the official version, to be anti-Soviet. Then how could the ordinary mortal know that the man whose speech he heard to-day, whose article he read to-day. whose orders he was obeying to-day, might not be annihilated to-morrow as a foe of the State?
   Since everybody was a potential spy or traitor, everybody hesitated to talk to or associate with everybody else.

Well might Fischer add that “the arrests and shootings demoralised the population”! He speaks of watching these events from "near and afar with mounting disappointment and concern.  . . .  But while the Soviet Government helped the Spanish Republic, I, who had hoped that victory in Spain might save Europe from war and Russia from reaction, imposed silence upon myself.” He goes on to add that “ with one exception, every important Russian who returned from Spain has been executed or arrested.”

Fischer's observations on the growth of Russian nationalism are worth quoting, though they are long: —

   As long as the Soviet Government behaved like a sincere advocate of world peace and helped the victims of Fascist aggression, I was willing to moderate my criticisms of its deed. But now the Russians have made a deal with Hitler. Now I am afraid Russia has set out on the road of Pan-Slav expansion. 

  In his speech on May 31st, 1939, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Molotov launched a just attack on the Anglo-French policy vis-à-vis Czechoslovakia, and said that at Munich "the large Slav nation of Czechoslovakia ” had been destroyed. This is the first time the word “Slav" has been used in such a connection by a Soviet statesman. 

   When all else fails to stir the imagination or insure the loyalty of a citizenry, patriotism is a shrewd expedient. About 1936, the Bolsheviks began putting tremendous emphasis on patriotism and on love of fatherland. This was new in Soviet propaganda. Theretofore, the accent had been on internationalism. It changed abruptly to nationalism. 

     I have never thought that these vaccinations ever “took.” On the contrary, it was Spain which excited the Soviet masses more than anything else in half a dozen years. 

    Lenin had strongly imbued the Soviets with the spirit of international solidarity. He did not have to teach the inhabitants of the country to hate the black, Tsarist past of Russia. But now a new cult of Russianism arose.  

  Pre-revolutionary Russian history was reinterpreted to make it palatable to the Sovietised generation. Peter the Great, reviled for his cruelty by all who read, was furbished up for modern heroism. A whole galaxy of Tsarist notables reappeared out of the dustbin into which a proper assessment of their anti-labour and anti-peasant activities had thrown them. Pokrovsky, a veteran Soviet historian of Russia’s past, was discarded.

 Figures like Alexander Nevsky were brought forward out of the mist of the Middle Ages and popularised in the films, in this case, paradoxically, to breed contempt for Germany.

   Art, literature and politics received a deepening Russian tinge, while minor nationalities receded somewhat out of focus. In the same period the Comintern was eclipsed, and agitation for the world revolution moved behind a thick cloud. Acquisitive Nationalism became the guiding star of Soviet foreign and domestic policies. 

   I believe this is the broad background against which the Bolsheviks’ rapprochement with the Nazis and their subsequent military moves can best be viewed.

Well might the Communists put up Mr. Pat Sloan at a public meeting in order to “Answer your doubts about Russia.” (How long has it been admitted that Communists might have doubts?)

It would seem that the chant, “ Trotskyism,” no longer convinces the faithful!

Harry Waite

"Stand Up To The Yanks" (1947)

From the October 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Early in September at meetings held in the London streets posters were displayed bearing the inscription “Stand up to the Yanks” They were not as might be supposed, put up by Mosley and his reawakening Fascists or by Tory Die-hards anxious to erect a barbed wire fence round the British Empire, but by the Communist Party of Great Britain. An older generation of Communists, whatever wrong theories they preached in other matters were in the main genuinely internationalist in outlook. What would they have thought of the degenerate views of their successors? What would they have thought of a Daily Worker editorial of September 9th, 1947, angrily protesting because some United States government official had said that Britain is “no longer an equal member of the Big Three”? Here are two passages from the Daily Worker article:

  “The spectacle of Britain being slurred, spat on, pushed around by its dear U.S. ally is so usual nowadays that it has almost ceased to be news.”
    "How much longer are we to tolerate a policy which brings this national humiliation?”

In saying this the Communists are as dishonest as they are inconsistent. When 19th century big business talked like this it knew that the words meant nothing without big armaments to back them up and prepared accordingly. Not so the Communists. They are campaigning for armaments to be reduced—here, of course, but not in Russia. All they are concerned with is to support whatever happens at the moment to he the foreign policy of State Capitalist Russia, and if this means inciting workers to ignorant hatred of Americans they do not hesitate. And if Russian policy should change the Communists will hurriedly switch their poisonous propaganda in another direction, as happened during the recent short-lived Russian attempt to cultivate the friendship of the Argentine dictator and during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact of friendship.of 1939.

In the meantime Communists in U.S.A., Palestine and on the Continent are telling their dupes to “Stand up to the British,” all with the same object of furthering Russian imperialist policy.

In Russia itself the old slogans of internationalism have long been discarded in favour of the cult of nationalism and the glorification of modern military heroes and those of Czarist times. In this the Russian Bolsheviks line themselves up with the patriotic boasters of all countries; with the Americans for whom that land is “ God’s own country," and with the poverty-stricken British workers who like to read that the British people are “the salt of the earth ” (Sunday Express, 3/8/47). Here is a specimen of the kind of lying stuff now being spoonfed to the wage-slaves of Russia:

  “A most important peculiarity of Soviet patriotism is the profound understanding of the superiority of the Soviet Socialist system over the bourgeois and all other class systems. It is precisely this peculiarity which above all characterises Soviet patriotism as patriotism of the highest kind. It follows that Soviet patriotism is in no way compatible with any manifestation whatsoever of obsequiousness by Soviet people before the modern capitalist world. Obsequiousness before foreigners is one of the relics of the past.

  ‘‘Our country has become the most advanced and progressive country in the world, and holds a leading place in the progressive development of the whole of mankind." (Izvestia, 13/8/47, quoted in the Times, 14/8/-47.)

It is legitimate for the socialist movement, being an international movement, to denounce exploitation, cruelty and ignorance wherever they are found, for socialists do not condone in one country what they condemn elsewhere. By the same standard it is sheer hypocrisy for Communists to denounce anything, anywhere, and if the Bolsheviks in Russia had any of the internationalism which characterised some of their members of a past generation they would be ashamed of the disreputable propaganda to which they and their foreign stooges have descended.

Socialists, while exposing and condemning world capitalism, extend the hand of fellowship to the working class of all lands, for only through international action by a socialist working class will Socialism be achieved.