1937 Without Repentance

An Analysis of Class Struggle in the USSR, 1937–38

Introduction

In the period of 1937–38, class struggle in the USSR definitively shifted into the sphere of the superstructure. Supporters of counterrevolution, deprived of economic power, penetrated the state and party apparatus. By using positions, personal ties, and influence, they established control over production and distribution.

At the same time, blows were struck against the remnants of the kulaks, wreckers in industry, and the criminal element. The 1936 Constitution of the USSR enshrined the protection of socialist property, declaring those who encroached upon it enemies of the people¹. Class struggle entered an acute phase at all levels of Soviet society.

At the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (March 1937), Stalin developed Lenin’s thesis on the class struggle as socialism is built, applying it to the conditions of capitalist encirclement². This thesis provides the methodological framework within which we will analyze the balance of forces in a concrete historical situation.

Class struggle, "excesses," and wrecking must be analytically distinguished. The conflation of these categories gives rise either to the bourgeois myth of the "Great Terror" or to an apologetics that ignores the real problems of the USSR.

Part I. Repentance

§1. Form

Bourgeois demands addressed to socialism are framed as religious "repentance." The October Revolution is cast as sin; the acceptance of capitalism, as atonement. The socialist state is guilty by definition; the bourgeois state innocent by default.

In the former socialist countries, each generation is required to repent anew. Communist parties and symbols are banned; "totalitarian crimes" are condemned by law. "Without repentance, Russia has no happy future"³, proclaimed the ideologues of Perestroika to yesterday’s Soviet citizens. Repentance for the repressions drags along repentance for collectivization, industrialization, and the revolution itself.

Bourgeois propaganda pedantically counts every sentence as a crime. The class enemy and the innocent are equated so that any violence exercised by the proletarian state against the bourgeoisie appears criminal.

The bourgeoisie does not count its own victims. Colonialism claimed over one hundred million lives; imperialist wars of the twentieth century are declared tragedies of an impersonal "historical process," rather than the result of competition for markets and colonies.

§2. Content

Repentance became one of the preconditions for the subsequent counterrevolution. At the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU (1956), Khrushchev, relying on the party apparatus, stripped the Stalin period of legitimacy⁴. Codified juridically^{5 6}, repentance assumed the form of negating errors without overcoming them; the report on the cult of personality functioned as a test of loyalty.

The vector of the theoretical development of Soviet society shifted toward degeneration. In Novyi Mir, with Khrushchev’s sanction, Solzhenitsyn was published (1962). Textbooks were rewritten; the Short Course of the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was removed from the curriculum⁷. The generation of the 1960s received a party history with new omissions. By the middle of the decade, schoolchildren knew more about repressions than about class struggle. Komsomol members of the 1970s grew up on the literature of the "Thaw," in which Soviet power was depicted through the doubts of the intelligentsia rather than through the conquests of the proletariat.

The degeneration of the party made it possible to accept and ideologically justify Perestroika. At the Nineteenth Conference of the CPSU (June 1988), Gorbachev launched a total "rehabilitation." By August 1990, all those repressed in the 1920s–50s had been rehabilitated⁸. "Repentance" expanded to include collectivization and the revolution itself.

A year later, the USSR was destroyed. In 1991–2000, Russia experienced a demographic catastrophe: a sharp rise in mortality alongside a collapse in birth rates, and mass impoverishment⁹. Repentance for the repressions of 1937–38 turned into a social catastrophe that exceeded the scale of the repressions themselves.

§3. Without Repentance

The Marxist position demands concreteness. Class struggle is an objective process aimed at suppressing the class enemy. The involvement of innocents occurred along two paths: through Politburo policy under conditions of undeveloped criteria and the absence of proletarian control, and through the fabrication of cases within the repressive apparatus under Yezhov’s leadership.

The bourgeoisie seeks to declare any violence criminal; Trotskyists see only bureaucratic arbitrariness. We acknowledge those who suffered innocently, but we do not equate them with class struggle as such. We do not repent for the revolution.

The defeat of the world revolution in 1918–23 created extremely harsh conditions. Capitalist encirclement and the inherited material base determined the concrete form of class struggle, but did not abolish the possibility of building socialism. The USSR withstood intervention, industrialization, and war; it became the world’s second-largest economy. The collapse of 1991 was the result of a concrete defeat in a war – economic, military, and ideological – that capital had waged since 1917.

The bourgeoisie demands repentance for class struggle while simultaneously waging its own class war without interruption. We refuse to accept its rules of the game, to regard the revolution as sin, and to replace Marxist analysis with moral self-flagellation.

Without repentance means without capitulation. In State and Revolution, Lenin wrote of the inevitability of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the transitional period from capitalism to socialism. This dictatorship presupposes violence and the suppression of the resistance of the exploiting class. To recognize this fact is to recognize the materialist conception of history. To refuse this recognition is to renounce Marxism.

Part II. Class Analysis

§1. Why 1937?

1.1 The State

The socialist state is the dictatorship of the proletariat; however, under revolutionary conditions it inherits the bourgeois form of the administrative apparatus and technically reproduces the preceding structure. Engels showed that the state is a "power arisen from society but placing itself above it".^{10 11}

Under conditions in which the proletariat constituted 10% of the population and 60% were illiterate¹², workers’ control existed only nominally.

The problem of hostile elements penetrating the state apparatus and its bureaucratization was recognized. In 1922, Lenin proposed the creation of an institution of control through the merger of the Central Control Commission and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (TsKK–Rabkrin)¹³, but no ready-made program was developed. A narrow proletarian base, mass illiteracy, and the absence of political experience among the majority made mass control from below a generational task rather than a matter of the immediate years.

1.2 External Threat

The USSR developed under prewar conditions. After the Seventh Congress of the Comintern (1935), communists shifted to preparing for confrontation with fascism, recognizing the inevitability of war in the coming years.

In the Far East, Japanese aggression was escalating. The conflict over the Chinese Eastern Railway (1929), the invasion of China (1937), followed by Lake Khasan (1938) and Khalkhin Gol (1939)¹⁴. Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact (1936). The Munich Agreement (1938) freed Hitler’s hands in the East; the annexation of Austria and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia followed.

A cordon of hostile regimes formed around the USSR. After Piłsudski’s death (1935), Poland continued the anti-Soviet course of Sanacja. Finland, which had fought against Soviet Russia in 1918–1920, as well as the Baltic states and Romania, waited for a favorable moment to attack¹⁵.

Trotskyists and anarchists launched an armed uprising in Barcelona (May 1937), destabilizing the rear of the Spanish Republic. Francoist General Mola: "Four columns are advancing, the fifth is already in the rear"¹⁶. The failure of the revolutions in Germany (1923) and Hungary (1919) consolidated the USSR’s isolation; the Comintern did not create an external support base for the socialist state.

In February–March 1937, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) heard Yezhov’s report "On Wrecking, Diversion, and Espionage by Japanese-German-Trotskyist Agents." The party leadership assessed the purges of the early 1930s as insufficient. The Plenum’s resolution sanctioned the intensification of the NKVD’s repressive policy¹⁷.

At the June Plenum of 1937, Yezhov reported on the Tukhachevsky conspiracy and a "right-wing fascist conspiracy within the NKVD" headed by Yagoda. According to his report, counterrevolution had united into a "center of centers" linked to the intelligence services of Germany, Japan, and Poland. Rightists, Trotskyists, Zinovievites, military figures, and Mensheviks masqueraded as loyal functionaries, penetrated the party and state apparatus, and prepared defeat in war. The enemy had penetrated the punitive organs, paralyzed counterintelligence, and shielded the opposition¹⁸.

1.3 Internal Threat

The party oppositions possessed programs and concrete social bases. The Right Opposition (Bukharin, Rykov) expressed the interests of the well-to-do peasantry and a layer of bureaucracy interested in preserving market mechanisms and slowing industrialization.

The Left Opposition (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev) relied on sections of the intelligentsia and the army command staff, who tied their future to the reversal of the Stalinist course, which they regarded as a departure from Leninism. Since his expulsion in 1929, Trotsky publicly criticized the party for bureaucratization (see, for example, Trotsky L.D., An Open Letter to the Members of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)¹⁹.

At a meeting of the NKVD leadership in December 1936, Yezhov stated: "We are late by at least four years"²⁰.

The Shakhty Trial (1928) and the "Industrial Party" trial (1930) revealed the penetration of hostile elements into industry. Acts of sabotage at enterprises increased; rank-and-file party cadres were murdered; attempts were made on the leadership.

Industry in 1928–1937 grew at rates of 20% or more per year. Accidents, missed deadlines, and technical failures became widespread. Plan fulfillment proceeded under acute personnel shortages, and errors coincided with sabotage. Each failure allowed three explanations: the objective difficulty of the task, the incompetence of the executor, or wrecking. Distinguishing among them in real time was impossible.

In his speech at the Conference of Socialist Industry Workers (1931), Stalin stated: "We are 50–100 years behind the advanced countries. We must cover this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed"²¹. By 1937, the gap had been reduced, but every failure to meet the plan was read as sabotage under conditions of a military race.

A manager who failed to fulfill the plan automatically fell under suspicion. Military pressure intensified political suspicion; suspicion translated into repression.

1.4 A New Base and the Enemy in the Superstructure

By 1936, the means of production had been socialized, and the exploiting classes had been eliminated as an economic force²². The share of industry in the national income of the USSR increased from 25.5% (1913) and 34.8% (1928) to 52.1% (1935), while national income itself grew from 21 to 66 billion rubles²³. The intensification of class struggle occurred amid the upswing of socialist construction.

The NEP (1921–1928) created an economic base for counterrevolution: private traders, lessees of industrial enterprises, and the strengthening of the kulak stratum in the countryside. During this period, the kulak consolidated economically, controlled a significant portion of marketable grain, and dictated prices²⁴. This was a controlled concession for the sake of economic recovery, but a concession that created an enemy.

Collectivization eliminated the kulak’s private property; however, remnants of the exploiting classes, materially interested in restoration and ideologically hostile, persisted. In 1929–1932, mass kulak terror unfolded – arson of fields and collective farms, murders of militiamen, agitators, and party workers. The scale of violence amounted to thousands of victims in each region^{25 26 27}.

The NEP generated administrative officials of distribution. The petty bourgeoisie flowed en masse into the trade and planning apparatus. Collectivization created a kolkhoz bureaucracy – chairmen, accountants, heads of machine-tractor stations.

The shortages of the transitional phase produced managerial strata interested in access to distribution. The incompleteness of the liquidation of old class relations created fertile ground for careerism, which penetrated the punitive apparatus and laid the basis for the fabrication of cases.

The 1936 Constitution of the USSR substantially expanded the democratic rights of the working people. The transition to universal, direct, and secret elections to the Supreme Soviet²⁸ created a real threat to the position of the existing apparatus. The nomination of former members of opposition parties and popular figures from the intelligentsia could destroy established careers.

§2. Directions of Repression

Bourgeois historiography reduces the processes of 1937–1938 to the unified image of the "Great Terror." In reality, five parallel directions operated, with different scales and mechanisms.

The party purge was conducted through party committees and open meetings. The procedure was democratic; decisions were made collectively on grounds such as passivity, careerism, ties with the class enemy, and moral degeneration. During the purges of 1933–1934, 22% of the total party membership was expelled; in absolute terms, membership declined by 1.2 million²⁹. From January to July 1937, 20,500 members were expelled, mostly old cadres³⁰. Expulsion from the party did not in itself mean arrest; those expelled lost status while retaining connections and the will to resist.

Leadership figures were tried in open, demonstrative proceedings by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. These included the trials of the "Trotskyist–Zinovievite Center" (1936), the "Parallel Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center" (1937), and the "Anti-Soviet Right–Trotskyist Bloc" (1938). The Tukhachevsky conspiracy (1937) was examined by the Supreme Court of the USSR.

The purge of the NKVD proceeded through internal inspections and orders. In 1937–1940, approximately 10,800 personnel of the organs were arrested (of whom 937 were "Yezhovites"), and more than 7,000 were dismissed (22.9% of the listed staff)³¹. The system recognized the presence of the enemy within the punitive apparatus itself.

The purge of the army likewise proceeded through the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court and internal orders. In 1937–1938, 36,761 commanders and political officers were dismissed (about 10,000 were later reinstated)³².

The mass operations of 1937–1938 resulted in 1.5 million arrests; 680,000 people were executed³³. NKVD Order No. 00447 of July 30, 1937, specified the following categories: former kulaks, criminals, and anti-Soviet elements³⁴. The latter included remnants of the White Guard movement, members of anti-Soviet parties, nationalists, thieves, escaped convicts, former kulaks, and clergy continuing anti-Soviet activity.

Bourgeois historiography merges all these directions into a single figure of "tens of millions of victims," blurring the specificity of each process. This conflation obstructs an understanding of the logic of class struggle.

§3. Who Was Repressed?

The main blow fell along three lines: the party–state leadership through open trials, courts, and the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court; mass operations against the "socially dangerous element" through troikas and the NKVD Special Council; dvoikas and "special troikas" targeting ethnic groups (NKVD Orders Nos. 00485, 00439, 00606, etc.^{35 36 37}), as well as internal purges of the punitive apparatus itself.

The precise social composition of those repressed is unknown. Ninety years later, the data remain outside full scholarly circulation.

Certain conclusions can be drawn from declassified materials of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR. The archive preserves data for 1937 that record both the original figures and subsequent revisions made in the autumn of 1938, when the purge of the NKVD began. We present the unrevised version.

Table 1

Social Composition of Those Arrested by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR in 1937³⁸

Workers and collective farmers accounted for 15.9% of those arrested (after revisions, their share fell to 4%). Former kulaks (39.7%), white-collar employees (18.1%), declassed elements and "former people" (13% combined). Together, these categories constituted more than 70% of the repressed.

However, the methodology of accounting distorted the picture from the outset. The punitive organs conflated "social origin" with "social position." An arrested worker whose father had been a kulak was recorded in the kulak category rather than as a worker³⁹. The statistics inflated the share of the "class-alien" at the expense of the proletariat.

Contemporary studies based on declassified documents of the Ukrainian SSR (V. N. Nikolsky) show a different ratio: workers – 44.68%, collective farmers – 18.46%. Together, nearly two thirds of those repressed.

Table 2

Socio-Professional Composition of the Repressed in Donetsk (Stalinsk) Oblast³⁹

Party members constituted less than 10% of the total number of those repressed: 55,428 out of 779,056 in 1937 (7%), and 61,457 out of 593,336 in 1938 (10%)⁴⁰.

The mass operation under Order No. 00447 had, by January 1, 1938, produced 555,641 arrests, of whom: former kulaks – 248,271 (44.6%), criminals – 116,506 (21%), and "other counterrevolutionary elements" – 162,594 (29.2%)⁴¹.

The national operations of 1937–38 (Polish, German, Latvian, Greek, and others) resulted in the conviction of 335,000 people, of whom 247,000 were executed, accounting for roughly one third of the total number of those repressed during this period⁴².

The national operations were directed against counterrevolutionary organizations that used ethnic affiliation as a cover. As a result, entire national groups from border regions were included in the lists – those employed at defense plants, rail and water transport, oil refineries, electrical grid facilities, and other sensitive positions, including command personnel of the Red Army and the NKVD.

In the Red Army, judicial bodies convicted 1,713 commanders of middle, senior, and higher rank for counterrevolutionary crimes in 1937–1938; including extrajudicial bodies (troikas, the NKVD Special Council), the total number convicted in 1937–1940 amounted to approximately 3,924 persons⁴³.

Bourgeois historiography claims that the army was "decapitated," which allegedly caused the catastrophe of 1941. The shortage of command personnel was connected to the growth rate of the Red Army – from 1–2 million personnel in the mid-1930s to 4 million by 1941. It was physically impossible to train an officer corps within three years. The USSR’s combat experience was limited to local conflicts, whereas the Wehrmacht had traversed all of Europe in three years. The disorganization of 1941 is explained by the tempo of army expansion and the qualitative superiority of the enemy; repression is secondary here.

For the entire period from 1921 to 1953, 4,060,306 persons were arrested for counterrevolutionary and especially dangerous crimes. These data are confirmed by multiple sources: the studies of V.N. Zemskov and O.B. Mozokhin⁴⁴, the memorandum of Colonel Pavlov, head of the 1st Special Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (1953)⁴⁵, and the letter of USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko (1954)⁴⁶.

§4. For What Were They Convicted?

Statistics on convictions by articles are likewise fragmentary. Data from the NKVD Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) for October 1936–January 1938 record only the "most important crimes," leaving 18.2% of those convicted in the category of "other crimes," of which minor offenses (embezzlement, domestic offenses, official misconduct) accounted for 4.7%.

Table 3

Convicted for the period (total 1,028,740 persons)⁴⁷

The main share fell on the kulak operation (55.6% of all those prosecuted). Espionage accounted for 8.6%, half of it under the "Polish operation." Counterrevolutionary organizations made up 6.4%, of which Trotskyists accounted for 4.2%. Wrecking, diversion, terror, and nationalism together amounted to roughly 8%. Counterrevolutionary agitation (Article 58-10) is absent from the table and likely falls either under the kulak operation or within the unaccounted 13.4% of "other crimes."

Without access to the materials of individual cases, it is impossible to establish the substantiation of the charges in each instance. Bourgeois historiography declares all accusations to be fabrications and exploits this lack of knowledge to equate class enemies with innocent victims.

The Rudenko Commission (1954) annulled 4% of sentences and mitigated punishment in 32% of cases, which indirectly indicates the scale of judicial error. However, the motives and criteria of the commission require separate examination⁴⁸.

§5. How Were They Repressed?

NKVD Order No. 00447 of July 30, 1937, set an operational limit of 268,950 persons: 75,950 under the first category (execution) and 193,000 under the second (camps for 8–10 years).

The final figures exceeded the initial plan many times over: in 1937 – 790,665 persons (353,074 executed, 429,311 sent to camps); in 1938 – 554,258 persons (328,618 executed, 205,509 sent to camps)³³.

Cases were reviewed by troikas, extrajudicial bodies reestablished by the same Order No. 00447 with the sanction of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), composed of the head of the regional NKVD administration, the oblast prosecutor, and the secretary of the oblast party committee. Their authority covered: first category (execution) and second category (camps up to ten years). In addition, cases were handled by dvoikas (the NKVD–Prosecutor of the USSR Commission). Decisions were taken by lists, in the absence of the accused, without defense or right of appeal⁴⁹. The personal composition of the troikas and the expansion of quotas were approved by the Politburo.

From July 5 to July 31, 1937 – prior to the formal approval of Order No. 00447 – the Politburo adopted 13 decisions approving the composition of troikas and operational limits for republics and regions. On July 10, a member of a troika, First Secretary of the Moscow Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) N. S. Khrushchev, reported the registration of 41,305 persons in Moscow Oblast⁵⁰.

NKVD Order No. 00486 of August 15, 1937, prescribed the arrest of wives and husbands of "enemies of the people" (members of right-Trotskyist espionage-diversionary organizations convicted by the Military Collegium and military tribunals) and the dispatch of children over 15 years of age to camps, while younger children were sent to orphanages⁵¹. In total, more than 18,000 persons were arrested under this category⁵².

Democratic centralism was absent. Regions competed in demonstrations of vigilance, striving to appear "firmer" than the center. Regional NKVD administrations requested increases in quotas, citing that "enemies still remained." The Politburo approved these requests post factum; discussions of quota expansions were largely formal⁵³.

§6. Correction of Errors

The mass operations began to be curtailed in the spring of 1938. By a resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of January 31, 1938, the work of troikas was extended in 22 regions; in the remaining 36, the operation ended by February 15. By April 1938, troikas ceased operation in half of the remaining 22 regions. In the summer and autumn of 1938, they functioned only in a few oblasts and krais⁵⁴. The resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR of November 17, 1938, definitively abolished the troikas and prohibited mass arrests⁵⁵. The number of executions fell from 328,618 in 1938 to 2,552 in 1939.

The process began with Directive No. 2709 of the NKVD of the USSR and the Prosecutor’s Office of the USSR of December 28, 1938, which prescribed the annulment of incorrect decisions of the former troikas⁵⁶. NKVD Order No. 00116 of February 4, 1939, regulated the procedure for reviewing complaints by convicted persons, while Order No. 001214 of October 10, 1939, further developed the mechanism of review^{57 58}.

In 1940, Order No. 0165 of April 23 by the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor of the USSR clarified the procedure for revising decisions of former NKVD–UNKVD and URKM troikas⁵⁹.

In 1939, 327,4 thousand persons were released. The exact proportion of repressed persons among them is unknown – some prisoners had served their terms or were released early on other grounds⁶⁰.

In May 1954, a commission was formed under the leadership of the USSR Prosecutor General R. A. Rudenko. It included a central commission and local commissions in republics, krais, and oblasts, comprising representatives of the prosecutor’s office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Ministry of Justice⁶¹.

By April 1, 1955, the commission had reviewed 237,412 cases. It annulled 8,973 decisions; reduced sentences in 76,344 cases; reclassified 2,891 cases; amnestied 21,797 persons; canceled exile in 1,371 cases; left 125,202 cases without revision; and issued other decisions in the remaining 834 cases⁴⁸.

After the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev seized control of the review process and, by labeling it "rehabilitation," transformed it into an instrument for delegitimizing the Stalin period.

§7. Were There Alternatives?

In the abstract, an alternative to the troikas existed: workers’ control, judicial procedures, and the expansion of democratic mechanisms. Concretely, under the conditions of 1937, these mechanisms were unavailable.

The form of struggle was dictated by the conditions of the transitional period – a peasant majority, the persistence of petty-bourgeois consciousness, and counterrevolutionary elements within the apparatus. Added to this was the two-year horizon before war, the external threat, and the acute shortage of time for preparation.

Methodologically, it is essential to distinguish between abstract possibility and concrete necessity; otherwise, one can act only under different conditions. The capitalist encirclement did not provide those conditions. Centralized repressive measures remained the only mechanism for defending the proletarian state.

The possible objection – "why start a revolution if you were unprepared?" – substitutes idealist reasoning for materialist analysis. Revolutions are not "started" according to plan; they occur as a result of an objective crisis of society. October 1917 was a response to the collapse of the front, a food crisis, and the inability of bourgeois power to govern the country. Lenin formulated the condition of revolution as follows: the upper classes can no longer rule in the old way, and the lower classes no longer want to live in the old way⁶². This crisis was created by the world war and the bourgeoisie, not by the Bolsheviks.

Conclusion

Marxist analysis proceeds from objective conditions. The form and scale of the repressions were determined by the capitalist encirclement, which waged war against the USSR from 1917 to 1991. The repressions were one episode of this war; the collapse of the USSR in 1991 was its finale.

The character of the mass operations produced an informational vacuum. The system corrected errors, but it did not carry out a disarming, public self-criticism in the prewar period.

Taking advantage of this, the bourgeois concept of the "Great Terror" removes the capitalist encirclement from focus and personalizes the process in the figure of Stalin, in order to consistently discredit the individual, the period, and – most importantly – the very idea of the socialist state.

However, terror as a method of governance is not borne out by the facts. The mass operations were conducted in secrecy; arrest statistics were not published, and the composition of charges was not publicized. In 1938 the operations were urgently halted, case reviews began, Yezhov and hundreds of NKVD employees were arrested. If the goal had been public intimidation, these actions would have been senseless. The system was confronting a real threat under conditions of unfinished control over the apparatus.

The Stalinist apparatus proved capable of industrializing the country and winning the war, but the logic of emergency measures conflicted with the task of building mechanisms that protect socialism from bureaucratization. Centralization, necessary for the survival of the state, simultaneously created conditions for degeneration. By the early 1950s, the postwar upper stratum was turning into a careerist layer, and Khrushchev became the political expression of its interests, providing guarantees of "stability" after twenty years of uninterrupted mobilization.

This contradiction will reproduce itself in any new attempt at socialist construction. Socialism requires a strong state as its only possible form, yet centralization generates a stratum capable of detaching itself from the class. The resolution lies in the development of the productive forces, systematic Marxist education, and the expansion of the socialist camp. The more stable socialism is internally and the broader its victories on the world stage, the less the need for emergency measures.

Without repentance means without capitulation – but also without blindness to history.

Jan. 2025

Notes