Stalin’s Library by Geoffrey Roberts – a resumé and review – Part 11
Imagining America
As the Soviet Union embarked on the road of industrialisation, Stalin, marching in the footsteps of Lenin, was prepared to learn from any quarter. Since the USA after the First World War emerged as the most advanced capitalist country, the Soviet Union aimed with its rationally planned economy to catch up with, and then surpass, the USA. Lenin had famously said that in order successfully to construct a socialist economy, the Soviet Union had to combine Bolshevik revolutionary zeal with American efficiency. Naturally the Soviet Union was keen to import advanced technology, mass production and organisational methods at work from the United States.
“Do it the Ford way” and “create Russian Americans” were some of the Bolshevik slogans in the 1920s exhorting Soviet workers to increase the productivity of labour, without which the task of building socialism would be a pipedream. “American efficiency”, said Stalin, was the “indomitable force which neither knows nor recognises obstacles” (Works Vol 6, pp.194-5).
To make the utmost use of foreign technology, the Bolsheviks launched a campaign to bring foreign languages to the masses. Soviet proletarians were encouraged and supported in learning foreign languages, especially English and German, in order to assist them in understanding and using scientific and technical knowledge and machinery imported from the US and western Europe. The Politburo made arrangements for the teaching of foreign languages in Soviet schools, and instructed Party members to regard foreign language study as a fundamental duty. Stalin did not exonerate himself from this duty. He never attended classes or employed language tutors. Home study was his preferred method of learning foreign languages.
He was confident that in time Soviet workers would catch up with their American counterparts in efficiency and technique. “I consider it impossible to assume that workers of any particular nation are incapable of mastering new technique”, he told the visiting American progressive, Raymond Robins, in May 1933, noting that in the United States, black people were considered “bottom category men, yet they could master technique just as well as the whites” (Works Vol 13, p.271).
Of course, not all Soviet images of America were positive. “It used to be said in Russia that the light of socialism came from the West”, he wrote in an editorial in the party press on ‘American billions’, in which he charged the US with financing counter-revolution in Russia. As to the light of socialism coming from the West, he stated “And it was true … it was there … that we learned revolution and socialism”. But now it was not “socialism and emancipation that the West is exporting to Russia so much as subjection and counter-revolution” (Works Vol 13, pp.250-3).
Several thousands of US troops fought on Soviet soil with the anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian civil war. Hypocritical and racist US President Woodrow Wilson, regarded as a liberal hero in the West, was correctly considered by Bolshevik Russia to be the ringleader of the global counter-revolutionary coalition.
Before the adoption of a new Soviet Constitution in December 1936, Stalin did some comparative research on the constitutions of other states. A year after the adoption of the 1936 Constitution, elections took place to the newly-created Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In his election speech, Stalin highlighted the differences between Soviet and bourgeois-democratic elections: “Universal elections exist and are held in some capitalist countries, too, so-called democratic countries. But in what atmosphere are elections held there? In an atmosphere of class conflicts, in an atmosphere of class enmity, in an atmosphere of pressure brought to bear on the electors by the capitalists, landlords, bankers and other capitalist sharks. Such elections, even if they are universal, equal, secret and direct, cannot be called altogether free and altogether democratic elections.
“Here, in our country, on the contrary, elections are held in an entirely different atmosphere. Here there are no capitalists and no landlords and, consequently, no pressure is exerted by propertied classes on non-propertied classes. Here elections are held in an atmosphere of collaboration between the workers, the peasants and the intelligentsia, in an atmosphere of mutual confidence between them, in an atmosphere, I would say, of mutual friendship; because there are no capitalists in our country, no landlords, no exploitation and nobody, in fact, to bring pressure to bear on people in order to distort their will.
“That is why our elections are the only really free and really democratic elections in the whole world” (pp.167-8).
A close working relationship was established between Stalin and Roosevelt during the Second World War. Each side had good reasons for cooperating with the other. But soon after the end of the war, which coincided with Roosevelt’s death, the American bourgeoisie, frightened by the victories of the Red Army and the worldwide prestige of the Soviet Union, reverted to being the counter-revolutionary gendarme and Number One Enemy of the USSR.
One of the last articles Stalin ever read was by AA Poletaev, entitled ‘VI Lenin and the American Workers’ Movement’ published in a 1952 issue of Questions of history, dedicated to Lenin.
Because of its contemporary resonance, Stalin noted on this graphic paragraph in Polotaev’s article: “The American bourgeoisie have more than once warmed their hands with the flames of war in Europe, thereby profiting from the blood and suffering of millions of people. US monopolies have rapidly developed into a mighty fortress of capital with a vice-like grip not only on the American people but the peoples of Europe and Asia” (p.170).
Sadly, US imperialism, although now a declining force, still continues to have a vice-like grip not only on the American people but also the peoples of Europe and some other countries as well.
TO BE CONTINUED…