[PRWC Party Documents] Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism, January 15, 1992

Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism

III. The Process of Capitalist Restoration

First Stage: The Khrushchov Regime, 1953-64

Basahin sa Pilipino Basahon sa Hiligaynon

Armando Liwanag, Chairman, Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines

January 15, 1992

To Khrushchov belongs the distinction of being the pioneer in modern revisionism in the Soviet Union, the first socialist country in the history of mankind, and of being the most influential in promoting modern revisionism on a world scale.

Khrushchov's career as a revisionist in power started in 1953. He was a bureaucratic sycophant and an active player in repressive actions during the time of Stalin. To become the first secretary of the CPSU and accumulate power in his hands, he played off the followers of Stalin against each other and succeeded in having Beria executed after a summary trial. He depended on the new bourgeoisie that had arisen from the bureaucracy and the new intelligentsia.

In 1954, he had already reorganized the CPSU to serve his ideological and political position. In 1955, he upheld Tito against the memory of Stalin, especially on the issue of revisionism. In 1956, he delivered before the 20th Party Congress his "secret" speech against Stalin, completely negating him as no better than a bloodthirsty monster and denouncing the "personality cult". The congress marked the overthrow of the proletarian dictatorship. In 1957, he used the armed forces to defeat the vote for his ouster by the Politburo and thereby made the coup to further consolidate his position.

In 1956, the anti-Stalin diatribe inspired the anticommunist forces in Poland and Hungary to carry out uprisings. The Hungarian uprising was stronger and more violent. Khrushchov ordered the Soviet army to suppress it, chiefly because the Hungarian party leadership sought to rescind its political and military ties with the Soviet Union.

But subsequently, all throughout Eastern Europe under Soviet influence, it became clear that it was alright to the Soviet ruling clique for the satellite regimes to adopt capitalist-oriented reforms (private enterprise in agriculture, handicraft and services, dissolution of collective farms even where land reform had been carried out on a narrow scale and, of course, the free market) like Yugoslavia along an anti-Stalin line. The revisionist regimes were, however, under strict orders to remain within the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and the Warsaw Pact.

The unremoulded social-democratic and petty-bourgeois sections of the revisionist ruling parties in Eastern Europe started to kick out genuine communists from positions of leadership in the state and party under the direction of Khrushchov and under the pressure of anticommunist forces in society. It must be recalled that the so-called proletarian ruling parties were actually mergers of communists and social-democrats put into power by the Soviet Red Army. At the most, there were only a few years of proletarian dictatorship and socialist economic construction before Khrushchov started in 1956 to enforce his revisionist line in the satellite parties and regimes.

The total negation of Stalin by Khrushchov was presented as a rectification of the personality cult, bureaucratism and terrorism; and as the prerequisite for the efflorescence of democracy and civility, rapid economic progress that builds the material and technological foundation of communism in twenty years, the peaceful form of social revolution from an exploitative system to a nonexploitative one, detente with the United States, nuclear disarmament step by step and world peace, a world without wars and arms.

Khrushchov paid lip service to proletarian dictatorship and the basic principles of socialist revolution and construction but at the same time introduced a set of ideas to undermine them. He used bourgeois populism, declaring that the CPSU was a party of the whole people and the Soviet state was a state of the whole people on the anti-Marxist premise that the tasks of proletarian dictatorship had been fulfilled. He used bourgeois pacifism, declaring that it was possible and preferable for mankind to opt for peaceful transition to socialism and peaceful economic competition with the capitalist powers in order to avert the nuclear annihilation of humanity; raising peaceful coexistence from the level of diplomatic policy to that of the general line governing all kinds of external relations of the Soviet Union and the CPSU; and denying the violent nature of imperialism.

In the economic field, he used the name of Lenin against Lenin and Stalin by misrepresenting Lenin's New Economic Policy as the way to socialism rather than as a transitory measure towards socialist construction. He carried out decentralization to some degree, he autonomized state enterprises and promoted private agriculture and the free market. The autonomized state enterprises became responsible for their own cost and profit accounting and for raising the wages and bonuses on the basis of the profits of the individual enterprise. The private plots were enlarged and large areas of land (ranging from 50 to 100 hectares) were leased to groups, usually households. Many tractor stations for collective farms were dissolved and agricultural machines were turned over to private entrepreneurs. The free market in agricultural and industrial products and services was promoted.

In the same way that the revisionist rhetoric of Khrushchov overlapped with Marxist-Leninist terminology, socialism overlapped with capitalist restoration. The socialist system of production and distribution was still dominant for a while. Thus, the Soviet economy under Khrushchov still registered high rates of growth. But the regime took most pride in the higher rate of growth in the private sector which benefited from cheap energy, transport, tools and other supplies from the public sector and which was credited with producing the goods stolen from the public sector.

In the autonomization of state enterprises, managers acquired the power to hire and fire workers, transact business within the Soviet Union and abroad; increase their own salaries, bonuses and other perks at the expense of the workers; lessen the funds available for the development of other parts of the economy; and engage in bureaucratic corruption in dealing with the free market.

With regard to private agriculture, propaganda was loudest on the claim that it was more productive than the state and collective farms. The reemergent rich peasants were lauded. But in fact, the corrupt bureaucrats and private farmers and merchants were colluding in underpricing and stealing products (through pilferage and wholesale misdeclaration of goods as defective) from the collective and state farms in order to rechannel these to the free market. In the end, the Soviet Union would suffer sharp reductions in agricultural production and would be importing huge amounts of grain.

The educational system continued to expand, reproducing in great numbers the new intelligentsia now influenced by the ideas of modern revisionism and looking to the West for models of efficient management and for quality consumer goods. In the arts and in literature, social realism was derided and universal humanism, pacifism and mysticism came into fashion.

The Khrushchov regime drew prestige from the advances of Soviet science and technology, from the achievements in space technology and from the continuing economic construction. All of these were not possible without the prior work and the accumulated social capital under the leadership of Stalin. Khrushchov went into rapid housing and office construction which pleased the bureaucracy.

The CPSU and the Chinese Communist Party were the main protagonists in the great ideological debate. Despite Khrushchov's brief reconciliation with Tito, the Moscow Declaration of 1957 and the Moscow Statement of 1960 maintained that modern revisionism was the main danger to the international communist movement as a result of the firm and vigorous stand of the Chinese and other communist parties.

Khrushchov extended the ideological debate into a disruption of state-to-state relations between the Soviet Union and China. In the Cuban missile crisis, he had a high profile confrontation with Kennedy. He first took an adventurist and then swung to a capitulationist position. With regard to Vietnam, he was opposed to the revolutionary armed struggle of the Vietnamese people and grudgingly gave limited support to them.

The deterioration of Soviet industry and the breakdown of agriculture and bungling in foreign relations led to the removal of Khrushchov in a coup by the Brezhnev clique. Brezhnev became the general secretary of the CPSU and Kosygin became the premier. The former would eventually assume the position of president.