Attacking Lenin while the world

Attacking Lenin while the world changes

The Guardian

May 19, 2010

www.cpa.org.au, cpa@cpa.org.au , guardian@cpa.org.au


Two weeks after May Day, the Newcastle Herald – apparently having decided to “do something” in response to these demands for socialism on the part of workers and other marchers here and abroad – devoted an entire page to an attempted “demolition job” on no less a person than Lenin himself.

The author of this bizarre document was an academic from the University of Western Australia, Dr Mark Edele, Associate Professor of History at that institution. Attacking Lenin of course will do Professor Edele nothing but good in the eyes of the ruling class here and in other capitalist countries.

Nor will the article do harm in the eyes of the trendy petty-bourgeois left whose shrill “revolutionary” sloganising masks their objectively counter-revolutionary analyses and actions. Significantly, Professor Edele calls the sailors of the Kronstadt naval base, who – influenced by anti-Bolshevik anarchists and Left-Social Revolutionaries staged a counter-revolutionary mutiny in 1921 – “bona fide revolutionaries”.

It was at the end of the Civil War against the Whites and the imperialist Intervention, and was a very dangerous ploy, intentionally striking behind Red lines and threatening the revolutionary capital Petrograd itself. Had it been successful, it could have, probably would have, been disastrous for the Revolution in Russia, just when the intervention appeared to have been defeated.

Edele, however, thinks the Kronstadt mutineers were the “bona fide revolutionaries”, unlike the ragged armies of workers and peasants under Bolshevik leadership who fought against the likes of Kolchak and Denikin, whose armies were armed and financed by Britain, France and the USA, equipped with heavy weapons, even aircraft, backed up by actual armed forces from fourteen countries (including Australian naval and military contingents).

The Soviet forces won the Civil War, despite all the foreign aid to their opponents, because the bulk of the workers and peasants supported them. Edele has no time for that, however, claiming instead that “Lenin’s faction, the Bolsheviks, managed to win by hook and by crook”.

Having attempted to smear Lenin as an anti-Semite, Adele sums up Lenin as “Some hero, indeed. … Without Stalin, Hitler or Pol Pot, he would have made it on the winners’ rostrum in the competition for its [the 20th century’s] chief villains.”

For all the efforts of anti-Soviet and anti-Communist propagandists like Professor Edele, Lenin’s place in history and in the hearts and minds of the world’s workers and peasants is assured and permanent.

It may seem hard to discern at times, especially from within the restricted informational confines of a US satellite like Australia, but the world is turning inexorably to the Left. The ideals that Lenin worked for all his life have not only taken root across the world, they are bearing fruit with consequences that are reshaping the world we live in.

The apparent success of the counter-revolution in the USSR has been unravelling steadily. Far from becoming a satellite or neo-colony of the USA, three of the former republics of the USSR had already ousted their post-Soviet governments several years ago and reverted to Soviet-style regimes.

And now another one (Kyrgyzstan) has kicked out US stooge President Kurmanbek Bakiev, “in a popular uprising against nepotism, corruption and disastrous social policies which stretched his people to breaking point” (www.ravda.ru).

Bakiev came to power on a popular ticket in the US-backed 2005 “Tulip Revolution”, one of the so-called “colour revolutions” that were used to disguise counter-revolutionary actions in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe.

Far from bringing a new age of democracy and prosperity to Kyrgyzstan, Bakiev’s tenure in office has left a legacy of a population one third of whom live below the poverty line. Forty percent of the country’s income comes from remittances by Kyrgyz workers in Russia.

Imperialism’s reversal in Kyrgyzstan follows the total failure of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

Worse still, from imperialism’s point of view, Russia and China are both acting to shore up the anti-imperialist countries of the world, while endeavouring to prevent or defuse global conflicts and not to provoke the US and NATO into undertaking new dangerous military adventures.

In what the USA used to regard as its private playground, South and Central America, the massive bilateral agreements signed by Russia, Venezuela and Bolivia in April sent a clear message to the US that Moscow has huge potential to overtake Washington as the main trading partner for the region.

As Britain’s New Worker reported, “The tremendous range of agreements … covered oil, defence, nuclear power, agriculture, education, fishing, infrastructure, transportation and health care”, on a continent “where Russia is regarded with respect and the USA is considered by many as a pariah”.

Russia and Venezuela agreed to set up a joint stock company to operate the Junin 6 oil field with an option to widen the bilateral cooperation to three other fields in the Orinoco strip. At the same time, Russia and Bolivia reached agreement on a joint venture for exploration of Bolivia’s extensive oil and gas reserves (Bolivia’s reserves of natural gas are the second largest in Latin America).

And, with the USA sabre rattling at Venezuela, Russia granted Hugo Chavez’ government a loan of US$2.2 billion, for the purchase of T-72 tanks, Smerch multiple rocket launchers, S-300 anti-aircraft systems, and submarines. Venezuela has already acquired from Russia Mi-17 helicopters, Sukhoi-30 fighters, transport helicopters and 100,000 AK 103 guns.

Russia also agreed to help Venezuela undertake its own space program, including establishing a launch site for satellites.

All tangible signs that US imperialism in particular is facing a new world order.


This article was published by The Guardian, newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia, in its issue of May 19, 2010. Reproduction of articles, together with acknowledgement if appropriate, is welcome.

The Guardian,

Editorial, 74 Buckingham Street, Surry Hills,

Sydney NSW 2010, Australia

Communist Party of Australia,

74 Buckingham Street, Surry Hills,

Sydney NSW 2010, Australia

General Secretary: Dr Hannah Middleton

Phone (02) 9699 8844  Fax: (02) 9699 9833 Email CPA cpa@cpa.org.au

The Guardian guardian@cpa.org.au

Subscription rates are available on request.