The Machinations of the Modern Revisionists Which Opened the Beginning of the Collapse of Socialism
from Rodong Sinmun, 30 December 1995,
In his immortal classic “It Is a Lofty Moral Obligation for Revolutionaries to Respect Revolutionary Elders”, the great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il once again elucidated the process of degradation and collapse of socialism.
The great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il pointed out as follows: “The process of degradation and collapse of socialism set in when modern revisionism made its debut and began to slander the leaders and the revolutionary elders and distort and degenerate the working class and the revolutionary thoughts.”
Inheriting the socialist cause is in itself the act of inheriting the leader’s cause, the inheritance of the leader’s revolutionary thought and revolutionary accomplishments. Being loyal to the leader who pioneered the road to socialism for the first time; protecting, preserving and glorifying his thought and accomplishments; and doggedly safeguarding the revolutionary spoils won with blood — all this is none other than the process of fulfilling the socialist cause. Therefore, the attitude toward and the pride in the leader and his achievements constitute a yardstick for differentiating between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries.
The socialist cause demands that a staunch struggle be waged against any attempt to undermine the authority of the leader and obliterate his achievements. Particularly under the circumstances in which the imperialists and the reactionaries are viciously intensifying their machinations against socialism, this requirement becomes an all the more important issue. Unless this issue is settled correctly, the socialist cause would collapse. This truth is corroborated by the process of collapse of the Soviet Union.
The modern revisionists, upon seizing the leading positions of the state in the old Soviet Union by means of intrigue, committed the act of betrayal by debasing the leader and revolutionary elders and stamping out their accomplishments, thereby opening the door to the collapse of socialism.
The modern revisionists began by scheming viciously to debase Stalin and obliterate his accomplishments. Stalin, the heir to Lenin, inheriting Lenin’s cause, built the world’s first socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland against the fascist aggression by leading the Soviet army and people. In his reign Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the Soviet people, and the socialist cause in the Soviet Union became inseparable from his name.
The modern revisionists who seized the supreme power in the Soviet Union by all conspiratorial means after the death of Stalin in 1953 cast away their “loyalty” to Stalin like a worn-out pair of shoes and schemed viciously to wipe out this prestige and achievements. During their visit to Yugoslavia in 1955, they criticized Stalin at a formal occasion. This event drew worldwide attention. Some quick Western media vied with each other to come up with reports speculating that there would be a great anti-Stalinist uproar in the Soviet Union in the future.
As a matter of fact, beginning in 1956 there was a large-scale anti-Stalinist racket in the Soviet Union. The report delivered to the 20th CPSU Congress in February 1956 stressed the need for “peaceful coexistence” between socialism and imperialism, contrary to Stalin’s thought that struggle between socialism and imperialism is inevitable in the process of advance of socialism. Another report slandered and vilified Stalin by calling him a “oppressive dictator” and a “tyrant”. The modern revisionists, while belittling Stalin’s achievements in the building of socialism and in the fatherland liberation war, went so far as to defame him preposterously as the “criminal” who stalled the nation’s economic development and harmed the international communist movement, and as an “incompetent military strategist” who did not know how to command military operations. In this way Stalin’s authority, which had been considered absolute until that time, began to deteriorate rapidly.
On the other hand, the modern revisionists resorted to crafty ruses to add fuel to the anti-Stalin sentiment of the subversive forces in order to wage an anti-Stalin campaign. They staged the show of rehabilitating the “honor” of the numerous people who had been executed in the Stalin era as anti-party, counterrevolutionary elements. They also allowed the publication of writings and papers totally negating and criticizing the history of the Stalin era. As a result, Stalin’s activities were distorted systemically and deliberately and their distorted reports began to be disseminated in textbooks, writings, movies, papers, and television and radio broadcasts dealing with the socialist revolution and the building of socialism in the Soviet Union and the history of the fatherland liberation war. By so doing, the modern revisionists caused ideological unrest and confusion among the Soviet people, opening the way for the imperialists and the reactionaries to vilify the socialist cause all the more viciously.
The anti-Stalin machinations of the modern revisionists reached their climax when they took out Stalin’s remains enshrined on the Red Square and cremated them in an act of betrayal.
The modern revisionists also exerted efforts to defame Stalin’s comrades in arms and obliterate their achievements. Sound revolutionary elders had their dignity defiled and their positions taken away by the modern revisionists.
By negating socialist ideology, the modern revisionists distorted and degenerated the revolutionary thought of the working class. They negated socialist, communist ideology in the building of socialism and put materials at the center of attention by emphasizing the importance of material factors alone. In an article a Japanese reporter noted that it was due to communist ideology that the Soviet Union was able to bind more than 100 diverse nationalities into one unified body. He stated that “if communist ideology is lost, chances for the Soviet Union to remain as a unified state will become slim”. The revisionist line of the modern revisionists is a counterrevolutionary one which tore asunder communist ideology, the ideological foundation for the existence of the Soviet Union, and opened the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The modern revisionists maintained that the most important thing to do in time of peace is avoid confrontation and war as much as possible and develop the economy by mobilizing human and material resources to the fullest extent. That, they argued, is the best way to inherit Marxism- Leninism correctly. But it turned out to be nothing more than a vulgarization of Marxism-Leninism. The modern revisionists argued that “Marxism-Leninism will taste better when a lot of butter is spread on it”. Found in these words is the concentrated expression of their domestic and foreign policies.
Advocating “transition from the dictatorship of the proletariat to the state of all the people”, the modern revisionists said they would turn the Soviet Union into a communist society in 20 years or so, in a ploy to win the goodwill of the people. It was out of the question that a policy formulated by an extemporary decision and dogmatism, without any prudent calculation and feasibility, could be put into practice.
With ideological factors ignored by the modern revisionists in the building of socialism while stressing material and economic factors alone, egoism came to grow rapidly among the people of the Soviet Union.
The modern revisionists gradually weakened the leadership role of the party. They clung to the line of unprincipled compromise with imperialism while implementing the policy of “peaceful coexistence”. They thought that any military confrontation with the imperialists was senseless in itself, because, according to them, the aggressive nature of the imperialists had changed. They thus overtly and covertly preached the disarming of socialist countries.
However, the aggressive nature of imperialism is unchangeable. When the Caribbean crisis cropped up in October 1962, the U.S. administration adopted the decision to blockade Cuba. That was the gauntlet flung down to the Soviet Union by the United States before the whole world. The situation was so tense that a war between the Soviet Union and the United States seemed imminent. Under the circumstances, it seemed that the one would become the victor or the loser depending on whether the other would yield or not. The modern revisionists, cowed by the tough stand of the United States, surrendered to it in the end. Seeing the Soviet Union show the white feather, the United States became so emboldened that it came to demand the dismantling of the Soviet missile site in Cuba. The United States got away with this demand. During the Caribbean crisis the Soviet Union was subjected to an unbearable shame and humiliation before the whole world, and its prestige was damaged beyond repair because of the “peaceful coexistence” policy of the modern revisionists. In this way. socialism in the Soviet Union, kept off the right track by the modern revisionists, began to crumble rapidly from within.
Scores of years after that, the Soviet national flag was lowered from above the Kremlin with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The modern revisionists, through their anti-socialist maneuvers, opened the way for the collapse of the Soviet Union, which the armed intervention of the imperialist allied forces could not bring down and which even the millions of fighting men of the regular armed forces of the fascist Germany could not destroy; and in the end the Soviet Union crumbled overnight.
The collapse of the Soviet Union left the dire lesson that it is impossible to preserve socialism unless the authority of the leader is protected staunchly and his achievements are safeguarded thoroughly. If the anti-socialist machinations of the modern revisionists to defame the leader and distort and denigrate his revolutionary thought had been seen through and crushed underfoot on time, socialist ideology would have been preserved in the Soviet Union and the tragedy of the collapse of the Soviet Union would have been averted.
As elucidated by the great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il, historical experience tells that if the leader is defamed, if his achievements are obliterated, if his revolutionary thought is distorted and degenerated, the revolution will be stymied midway and the socialist gains won with blood will go down the drain.
Kim Chong Ok