The meaning of the current rehabilitations in the U.S.S.R

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While the Soviet bureaucracy elevates Bukharin to the role of heroic Bukharin to the role of heroic anti-Stalinist, it continues to falsify 12 SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1988 The following is an interview with Susan Weissman, a long-time scholar and commentator on the Soviet Union. Weissman is 'an editorial board member of Critique, a journal of Soviet studies and socialist theory published in Scotland. She is also the moderator of a program titled "Portraits of the U.S.S.R.," which is broadcast weekly on KPFK Radio in Los Angeles. The interview was conducted by Socialist Action editor Alan Benjamin on Nov. 14.

Socialist Action: What is the reason behind the rehabilitation of many of Stalin's victims in the Soviet Union today?

Susan Weissman: It is important to understand that an important plank of glasnost and perestroika is the re-examination of history. If you look at the film "Repentence, " which is an allegory of the Stalin years, the point is made that until Stalin is forced to stand trial for his crimes, the truth cannot emerge. In other words, the reforms sought by Gorbachev cannot go forward on the basis of a false understanding of the society and of its history.

The coalition headed by Gorbachev (there are different interest groups in the party apparatus) began to attack Stalin and to rehabilitate some of Stalin's victims. They began with the Moscow Trials. Of course their main goal is to rehabilitate Bukharin by elevating him into the real anti-Stalinist symbol.

But Bukharin was always a Stalinist, except in the period between 1918 and 1921, when he was a "left communist." He was in favor of the market and increased concessions to the peasantry, and that's the part they're trying to rehabilitate. The other reason Bukharin is important for them is that he was in favor of a tightly controlled society with the one-party system.

They have also rehabilitated some Left Oppositionists [supporters of Leon Trotsky], including someone who is very important for our tradition-Khristian Rakovsky. But Rakovksy's works have still not been published in any major mainstream organ. One of the members of the New Left is trying to publish Rakovsky's important letter to Valentinov, which is called "The Professional Dangers of Power." It's a trenchant critique of bureaucratism.

S.A.: What about Leon Trotsky; will he be rehabilitated?

Weissman: They have now said, if only implicitly, that everyone who was accused by Stalin was falsely accused-and that means Trotsky as well We've already started to see in the Soviet press how they're planning to deal with Trotsky. They've come up with a new falsification of his role in Soviet history.

In order to talk about Trotsky, they've had to cleanse him of the absurdities of the positions he was said to hold. They're trying to say that he was a revolutionary and a hero of the civil war—but that he made terrible mistakes. Many recent articles state that Trotsky was a "super-industrializer" who would have been worse than Stalin if he had come to power.

So they're saying that Trotsky was not a traitor, but he was wrong, just as Stalin was wious.

S.A.: The recent article in Pravda by Stalin's biographer, General Volkogonov, is an extremely sophisticated attack on Trotsky and his ideas-straight out of the school of Stalinist falsification Weissman: Absolutely. The Volkogonov piece is full of lies. It says, for example, that Trotsky, along with Stalin, was opposed to the 1917 revolution. It says that Trotsky was in favor of exploiting the peasants. It also Bukharin to since he was the leader of the Red Army. He could already see the results of war communism.

Later on Trotsky said that collectivization would only make sense if the collective farms were industrialized. He was for mechanized agriculture. In the first five-year plan he proposed manufacturing large quantities of agricultural machinery. For Trotsky mechanized collective farms would stand as an attraction to the peasant, who was still toiling with horse and plow.

Stalin, on the other hand, collectivized to break the resistance of the peasantry, and when they were put on the collective farm there was no machinery there for them. As in other respects, Stalin took something Trotsky Trotsky's ideas to steal certain aspects of Trotsky's program, cleanse him of the most grotesque absurdities-but then make him look like even more of a dictator than Stalin. They're doing this to steal the banner of his anti-bureaucratic stance while emptying it of its revolutionary content.

And to accomplish this, they have to leave out entirely Trotsky's real views on the role of the working class, on the role of democratic planning, and on his critique of privilege. So in a sense, they're pushing for an emasculated rehabilitation of Trotsky.

S.A.: From what I have read, there seems to be a considerable amount of resistance among Soviet workers to Gorbachev's perestroika reforms—that is, to the increased labor discipline, lower wages, growing unemployment, and other attacks on the social gains of the October Revolution.

In this context it seems to me that what Trotsky wrote about the defense of the planned economy and the need for workers' democracy would find a real hearing among Soviet workers. These workers, however, haven't had any access to Trotsky's writings or ideas other than the slanders from Stalin and now from people like Volkogonov.

But how about the Soviet New Left: What (continued on page 13)