Seven decades later they tremble at his name. For the bourgeoisie, capitalists and exploiters, he is the personification of evil. For fascists and neo-Nazis, his image is enough to cause nightmares. Social Democrats, opportunists and other enemies of the working class movement have been trying for many decades to slander him with tones of lies and propaganda.
On March 5, 1953, 70 years ago, Joseph Vissarionovich Dzughasvilli, the man whose leadership influenced the course of the 20th century like very few others, left his last breath at his dacha in Kunchevo. The next day, in a joint statement published in “Pravda”, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the USSR Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet were announcing the death of Stalin:
"The heart of Lenin’s comrade-in-arms and the inspired continuator of Lenin’s cause, the wise leader and teacher of the Communist Party and the Soviet people, Joseph Vissarionovich STALIN, has stopped beating. Stalin’s name is boundlessly dear to our party, to the Soviet people, to the working people of the world. Together with Lenin, Comrade STALIN created the mighty party of Communists, reared and forged that party; together with Lenin, Comrade STALIN was the inspirer and leader of the great October socialist revolution, founder of the world’s first socialist state. Continuing Lenin’s immortal cause, Comrade STALIN led the Soviet people to the world-historic triumph of socialism in our land. Comrade Stalin led our country to victory over fascism in the second world war, which wrought a radical change in the entire international situation."
Being the head of the CC of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the leader of the Soviet state following Lenin's death, Stalin became inextricably linked with the great achievements of the socialist construction in the Soviet Union and the development of the socialist system in a number of countries in Eastern Europe and Asia.
But even more significantly, what bears the indelible signature of the great bolshevik revolutionary is the colossal contribution of the Soviet Union in the Great Antifascist Victory of the Peoples and the crushing of Nazism-Fascism during the Second World War. Today we can ask ourselves: What would have been the fate of Europe without the legendary Red Army victories in Stalingrad, the heroic Battles of Moscow and Kursk, without the bravery and heroism of the men and women of the Soviet Union? What would have been the fate of the European countries without the leader about whom General Georgy Zhukov wrote that “planned every move, made all the decisions”, characterizing him as the “greatest military genius ever existed”?
Without doubt, Stalin has been the most slandered political figure of the 20th Century. The anti-Stalinist campaign which began right after his death became an official policy following the right-opportunistic turn of the 20th Congress of the CPSU (“de-stalinization” process under Nikita Khrutchev) and was skyrocketed after the counterrevolutionary overthrows in the end of 1980s, continues unabated to this day. For decades, an entire “industry” of falsification of history has been operating unceasingly, targeting Stalin and the period of his leadership, that is from 1924 to 1953. Tons of ink and countless pages have been consumed for the construction and promotion of anti-communist fictions, in an attempt to demonize Stalin and present him as an inhumane and bloodthirsty dictator. From the so-called “Holodomor” (Ukrainian Famine), the notorious “Moscow Trials” and the “Great Terror”, to the Nazi crime in Katyn and the alleged millions of executed in the infamous Gulags, the anti-communist propaganda has imposed its “sacred” truth in academia, mass media, everywhere. Unscientific libels, such as MI6 agent Robert Conquest's “The Great Terror” and “The Black Book of Communism”, are considered gospels of historical accuracy, while they are nothing more than products of organized well-paid slanderous campaigns. Consequently, every attempt to challenge these “sacred truths” is considered as “heretic” and ideological “extremism” that has to be despised and isolated.
The answer is pretty clear. They know very well that the capitalist system is rotten and outdated and they tremble in the prospect of its inevitable overthrow. They want to prevent the younger generations from drawing proper conclusions from the socialist construction in the Soviet Union, which produced unprecedented in human history social achievements for the working people. Their aim is to obscure the struggle of the Soviet people for a society without exploitation of man by man. The attack on Stalin, wherever comes from, targets socialism.
Anti-communists are deeply disturbed by the fact that Stalin, stepping on the solid foundations laid by V. I. Lenin, managed to lead the Communist Party and the Soviet Union under the most difficult conditions of imperialist encirclement and internal counterrevolutionary subversion. Under Stalin's leadership, some of the most magnificent achievements took place, while the foundations of an unprecedented development were laid, radically changing the image of Soviet Russia, transforming a backward, mainly agricultural country, into an industrial superpower. Stalin and his comrades took an underdeveloped Russia, with all the disadvantages inherited from the Tsarist regime and created a highly organized workers' state, with incredible achievements in all sectors, from medicine to space technology. It is characteristic that 70 years after his death and more than three decades since the counterrevolutionary events in the USSR, despite the massive anti-communist, anti-soviet propaganda by the bourgeois mechanisms, Stalin remains a respected and popular political figure for a significant part of the Russian people (70% of the Russians have a positive view on Stalin according to a 2019 Levada Center poll).
Joseph Stalin defended socialism without taking a single step back. He repelled the attempts to restore capitalism inside the country by the anti-communist factions of Trotsky and other traitors. At the same time, the Soviet government under Stalin prepared the country to successfully face the challenges of the Second World War. Despite the subversive, hostile attempts of both the “democratic” capitalist states (Britain, France, USA) and the fascist capitalist Axis (Nazi Germany, Japan, Italy), the USSR not only didn't collapse but, on the contrary, led the anti-fascist struggle and achieved the most crucial military victories that sealed the outcome of the war.
Under Stalin's leadership the red flag with the hammer and sickle was raised on the Reichstag. That is why the imperialists and their collaborators, fascists and opportunists, will never forgive Joseph Vissarionovich and the Soviet people. That is why they will continue, even more furiously, to slander Stalin and communism in order to tarnish the necessity of socialism-communism in the people's consciousness. But no matter how hard they try, it is certain that they will fail.
After all, it was Joseph Vissarionovich Dzughasvilli himself who had predicted it: “After my death a lot of garbage will be thrown on my grave, but the wind of history will scatter it”.
* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.
