The Russian Maoist Party extends its warm fraternal
greetings to the MIM and RAIL comrades at Santa Barbara and
wants to congratulate you this February 23, 2001, on two
dates, one connected with North America and the other with
Russia, but both extremely important to all true communists
worldwide.
The first is, of course, the anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois
- one of the most prominent Black leaders in u.$. history,
a political thinker of no small caliber, educator, Pan-
Africanist, a leading figure in the Communist Party-USA at
the time it was still on the proletarian road and, last but
not least, a prolific and gifted writer. In many aspects of
his political thought, he was the precursor of the current
line of MIM (and RAIL) on the so-called "proletariat" in
the imperialist countries - a line we of the RMP fully
share and believe to be the only truly revolutionary one in
contemporary "leftist" politics. That is why we were among
the first to become signatories of MIM's Du Bois
anniversary statement, a text seeking to reorganize the
international Communist movement along genuinely scientific
Marxist lines.
Du Bois' name and work were extremely popular in the Soviet
Union, especially in the Stalin times, and are still fondly
remembered by Communists in the ex-USSR. Many of his works,
especially his brilliant autobiography, were extensively
published here, both in the original and in Russian
translation, and formed an essential part of the curriculum
of college and university courses in American literature.
If one were asked about three figures most readily
identifiable in the mind of Communists and anti-
imperialists here with the North American revolutionary
tradition, one would name John Reed, Albert Rhys Williams
and, of course, W.E.B. Du Bois.
It is really a shame that the ultra-revisionist CPUSA of
today (no more than a puppet in the hands of the Democratic
Party) is trying to claim the name and heritage of Comrade
Du Bois as its own. Within the u.$. borders, it is you,
comrades, that are the true successors to the legacy and
cause of Du Bois and the early CPUSA. It is both your
prerogative and responsibility to, as Stalin said, "lift up
that banner and proudly carry it onwards. Except you, there
is no one to do it."
The second - and no less important - anniversary that
Communists worldwide are celebrating today is Red Army Day,
the day on which the Soviet Army was founded by Lenin and
Trotsky in 1918. We deliberately mention the name of Leon
Trotsky in this connection, as an example of the dialectics
of revolutionary development. A progressive figure in 1918,
a close comrade-in-arms of Lenin and one of the founders of
the Red Army, he later fell victim to his idealist
illusions (of which one of the principal ones was
overestimating the revolutionary nature of the Western
proletariat of his day) and eventually became no better
that an enemy of the USSR and of the international
proletariat - and Trotskyism is still continuing to
exercise its harmful influence both here in Russia and in
your country. His example shows us how should ever be on
our guard against revisionism - an extremely potent poison
that may turn even the best revolutionary cadres into
traitors to the proletarian cause. "The correctness or
otherwise of the political and ideological line decides
everything."
As Lenin correctly remarked, "any revolution is worth
something only in case it can defend itself." The Red Army
was the first proletarian army in the world. It committed
many heroic deeds, chased out the White Guards and their
numerous foreign allies in the Civil War of 1918 - 1921,
smashed fascism, defended the Soviet Union's national
independence and brought liberation to the Eastern European
peoples in the Second World War. It became the model for
all the subsequent revolutionary armies, including Mao's
People's Liberation Army. The secret of the invincibility
of the Red Army lay in its extremely close ties to the
people (in the 1930s, it was considered a shame for any
Soviet man not to have served in the Army, which was at
that time formed on a voluntary basis) and in its being
firmly led by the Communist Party, the exponent of Marxism-
Leninism.
All of this was reversed by the Khrushchev revisionist
regime and its successors. Nikita Khrushchev went as far as
to use regular troops to drown in blood a perfectly
legitimate workers' demonstration in Novocherkassk in 1962.
The Soviet Army became a typical imperialist army of
aggression, as exemplified by the cases of Czechoslovakia,
Afghanistan, etc. The current fascist army of the Putin
regime, committing genocide in Chechnya and so
authoritarian in the relations between officers and men
(and among the men themselves) that it is often a danger to
a persyn's health and even life to go serve in that army,
is a direct successor of the late Soviet armed forces.
Our current stand for Russia is (exactly like MIM's and
RAIL's for Amerika) strongly anti-militarist. We oppose the
draft, we oppose the recent attempts at military buildup,
we strongly come out against the war in Chechnya, we want
to do our best to weaken and demoralize the Russian army.
This distinguishes us from most post-Soviet "Communists",
who campaign to "support the Army and the Navy" and wax
nostalgic about the times of the military might of
Brezhnev's USSR. What we need is not the current,
bourgeois, army - a tool for suppressing the masses. What
we need is our own, proletarian, army - a tool of the
masses for their self-liberation. And when such an army is
built in the ex-USSR, it will be certainly modeled upon the
Red Army of Lenin and Stalin, the PLA of Mao and other
revolutionary examples.
We are also certain that the day will come when a People's
Liberation Army, fighting for the interests of the
international proletariat, will arise in North America. And
we believe that you, comrades, with your propaganda of the
correct ideological line, are paving the way for it.
All the best to you in your revolutionary work!
!Venceremos!
On behalf of the Russian Maoist Party,
Dar ZHUTAYEV (Chairpersyn)
Denis SELIVERSTOV
Olga UGLOVA
