On the Stalin Question (A Selection of Texts 1977-1981)
J. Posadas• On the Stalin Question, 1.3.1981
• Why Stalin assassinated the entire Bolshevik leadership,
23.12.1979
• The bureaucratic leadership of the Labour Party was
defeated in the 1979 elections, 23.12.1979
• Stalin, the Workers State and the atomic war, 5.3.1977.
Comrade J Posadas wrote these four texts mostly at the end of the 1970’s. In
2015, they may appear outdated - but they are still essential reading because
the conclusions from the ‘Thermidor’ of the Russian Revolution have not yet
been drawn in the Communist, intellectual and workers’ movements.
The author defines what he calls ‘the Thermidor in the USSR’ as the process
through which a bureaucratic layer, with roots in the rear-guard of the Russian
Revolution, snatched away the power of the proletariat, appropriated it,
betrayed revolutions and isolated the USSR
The author characterises the mentality of the Stalinian bureaucracy which then
developed as that of ‘a usurper’ because it confiscated proletarian power in
the name of Communism! Behind its pretence of continuing Lenin, it trashed
Bolshevik proletarian internationalism. It betrayed the Revolutions like the
Chinese (1925) and the Spanish (1936), and kept “Socialism in one country”
going by conciliating with world capitalism.
From 1917 until Lenin’s death in 1924, the Soviets had been the power organs
through which the proletariat and masses actually led the USSR. In the
Soviets, the proletariat was able to meet, explain, discuss, enthuse and
persuade the peasantry of the superiority of collective organisation.
Whilst the Russian Thermidor put an end to the Soviets, Stakhanovism and the
forced collectivisation of the countryside were ushered in; but by taking power,
the workers had proven that they did not need to be put to work like oxen in
harness, and that through actual Soviets (and not fake ones), they could
persuade the peasantry to act for the common good.