Let me begin by congratulating Binu Mathew on his probing queries during his interview with Andre Vltchek, which brought out a powerfully honest narrative from this world-known public intellectual, who dares to describe himself as a “..Revolutionary and Internationalist.’
Since these two issues – revolution and internationalism – had been a part of my life since the 1950s, both at the levels of theoretical arguments on the one hand, and praxis as a Communist activist on the other – may I enter into a comradely debate with Andre Vltchek ?
I am moved by Andre Vltchek’s account of his childhood, about his grand-parents and parents who came from a family that fought the Nazis, and yet also faced Stalinist persecution in the post-War years. I hold up my fist into a Red Salute to him for his steadfast belief in the cause of Communism, and his active involvement in movements all over the world that are fighting for that cause.
Having said that, I want to express a few reservations about some of the opinions that he subscribes to. First, he rightly talks about how Western capitalist media propaganda had shaped public perceptions against the Soviet Union. He then suggests that the Left should also invest in the media to counter the false news from the West. May I remind Andre Vltchek that the Left has had a long history of propaganda of alternative news – from the days of the Soviet Union ? To recount my personal experiences as a student in India in the 1950s, we had free access to Soviet news channels like Moscow Radio, magazines like `Soviet Land,’ and publicity materials from Progress Publishers in Moscow – which told us how a happy life the citizens were leading in the USSR ! These news reinforced our faith in the Soviet Union.
But all that we believed by relying on this Soviet media, was shattered by the revelations made by Khrushchov at the historic 20th party Congress of the CPSU. We were woken up to the atrocities carried out by Stalin – reports about which had come out in the Western press earlier but which we had till then tended to dismiss as bourgeois propaganda’ ! We all of a sudden realized that we had been brain-washed’ by false information (that covered up the reality at the ground level) – what is known today as fake news.’ Soon after that, the Soviet invasion of Hungary came as another blow, followed by the rolling down of Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia a decade later. We felt that this was not how the Soviet Union should deal with dissent among member states of the international Communist community. Many among us in the 1960s turned to Mao-led China, in search of an alternative model of socialism - again deriving inspiration from the reports of how democracy flourished under Mao’s message: “Let a hundred flowers bloom”, how the rural poor prospered through communes there, and how the Communist ideological impulses were being restored through the Cultural Revolution. Within a few decades, our search ended into a political cul-de-suc - when we were stumped by revelations about the persecution of Chinese dissidents who “bloomed” as flowers but extinguished soon after, about famines and deaths in Chinese villages during the much-propagated Great Leap Forward’, and the devastations brought about by Mao-led `Cultural Revolution’. Like the post-Stalin rulers in the Soviet Union who revealed the atrocities of their erstwhile leader, the post-Mao rulers of China also disclosed the ill-effects of the policies that their erstwhile political guru followed. But like their post-Stalin Russian counterparts (who have indulged in violent suppression of human rights), the Chinese post-Mao rulers have also trodden the same bloody path of killing dissidents – the most notorious illustration being the massacre at Tien-en-Man square.
Despite these repeated disappointments and disillusionment with the degeneration of the two main Marxist Communist- inspired states (the former Soviet Union, and China which still claims to be Communist !), I still retain my faith in the need for a Communist society – to be built by a new generation which can lift itself up from the present downward path of degeneration, and revive the basic principles of Communism in its praxis. I make a distinction between the basic Communist principles on the one hand, and the socialist system of governance that had been followed in the Soviet Union and China, which violated these principles on the other.
It is in this context of the failure of the socialist systems of governance (whether the past Soviet, or the present Chinese) that I want to raise the next query. Is it only the Western conspiracies that Vltchek mentions (“terror implanted from abroad” to overthrow Left regimes, and anti-Communist propaganda to brainwash the populace there – arguments with which I totally agree), or were there also internal subjective factors that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the East European Communist party-led regimes ? Instead of blaming individuals like Gorbachov or “criminal alcoholic Yeltsin” for the disaster, shouldn’t Vltchek, being a serious scholar, delve into the more fundamental problems ? Problems associated with the authoritarian model of the socialist regimes that was adopted by the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union, and the Mao-led Communist Party in China. Ill-conceived economic policies that hit hard common citizens giving rise to increasing disgruntlement, which broke out in sporadic outbursts. The brutal methods adopted by these Communist Party-led socialist regimes to crush such manifestations of protest, and the imprisonment of the intelligentsia who dared to support them. All through their history as rulers – whether in the past Soviet Union, or in Kampuchea in the 1980s, or in China today – the ruling Communist parties in their respective states, while indeed lifting up the poor to some extent by equitable distribution of resources in the initial period, had shown scant respect for human rights. It is this inglorious record that hangs heavy on the Left parties. They can restore their credibility by denouncing and rejecting this anti-democratic legacy , and reviving their links with the grass-roots movements in different parts of the world, which Andre Vltchek has been covering in his writings in such an illuminating way. Revolutionaries and Internationalists thus, should also engage in self-introspection, to examine the mistakes and misdeeds committed by their leaders, whether in power or outside, so that they don’t get repeated
Sumanta Banerjee is a political and civil rights activist and social scientist. Email: [email protected]
