For Socialist Revolution - I CANNOT GIVE UP PRINCIPLES by Nina Andreeva General Secretary of the AUCPB

WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
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FOR SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
AND THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
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No3 (3) FEBRUARY 2006
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CONTENTS
1. I CANNOT GIVE UP PRINCIPLES
2. KHRUSCHEV'S TREACHERY
3. THE TRUTH ABOUT VASILY STALIN
4. WHAT IS HAPPENING IN CHINA
6 THE GREAT WORK OF KIM JONG IL


I CANNOT GIVE UP PRINCIPLES
By Nina Alexandrovna Andreeva, General Secretary of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (AUCPB)
Published in newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya (Soviet Russia) in March 1988

I decided to write this letter after long meditation. I am a chemist and a lecturer at the Leningrad Technological Institute named after Lensoviet. Like many others, I am also a curator of one class. In our days, after the period of social apathy and intellectual parasitism, students gradually begin to be charged with energy for revolutionary changes. Naturally, there arise discussions about the ways of perestroika and about its economic and ideological aspects. Glasnost, openness, disappearance of the zones forbidden for criticism, the emotional incandescence in the consciousness of the masses, amidst the young people in particular, are shown not infrequently also in the raising of such problems, which are "prompted" in one or another measure by the Western radios or by those of our countrymen who are not thorough in their understanding of the essence of socialism. What is not talked about! Talk is going about a multiparty system, about the freedom of religious propaganda, about leaving the country to reside abroad, about the right to wide discussion of sexual problems in the press, about the need of decentralized leadership of culture, and about the abolition of obligatory military service. There is particularly a lot of argument among students about the past of the country.
Of course, we instructors have to answer the most acute problems which demand, besides honesty, knowledge, conviction, cultural horizon, serious meditation and profound appreciations. And these qualities are needed for all the educators of the young people, and not only for the collaborators of the chairs of social sciences.
The favorite place where we go with students for a walk is the park in Petergof. We walk along the snow-covered lanes, admire the famous places and statues, and argue. Argue! Young souls thirst for understanding all the complications and determine their path for the future. I watch my young excited interlocutors and think: How important it is to help them to discover truth, form a correct understanding of the problems of the society in which they are living and which is to be reformed by them and how I should clarify for them the right understanding of the ancient and recent of our history.
What are the apprehensions? Here is a simple example: it seems that so much has been written anbd told about the Great Patriotic War and about the heroism of its participants. But now long ago there was a meeting with Hero of the Soviet Union V.F. Molozev, a retired colonel, in one of the student hostels of our technological institute. Among others a question was raised to him about the political repression in the army. The veteran answered that he had not run into repression, and that many of those who, together with him, had gone through the war from the start to the end, became important military commanders. Some were disappointed to hear the answer. Being a topic of conversation, the matter of repression is hypertrophied among some young people, and overshadows the objective comprehension of the past. Instances of this kind are not rare.
Of course, it makes me very glad that even the "technical scholars" are keenly interested in the theoretical problems of social science. However, too many of such problems have already appeared which I cannot accept and to which I cannot agree. They are words about "terrorism", "political servility of the people", "uninspired social vegetation", "our spiritual slavery", "general fear", and "dominance of the boors in power" Only out of these threads is frequently woven the history of the transitional period to socialism in our country. Therefore, it is not surprising that, for instance, among some students nihilistic frames of mind are growing, and ideological confusion, displacement of political landmarks and even ideological polyphagia are appearing. Sometimes we hear the assertion that it is time to make communists answerable for having allegedly "dehumanized" the life of the country after 1917.
At the February Plenary Meeting of the Party Central Committee the imperative necessity was once again stressed for the "young people to be taught to see the world from the class point of view and understand the relations between the universal and class interests, including the class essence of the changes taking place in our country". Such view of history and of the present is incompatible with the political anecdotes, base gossips and sharp fantasies, which it is now possible to encounter frequently.
I read and reread the sensational articles. What can, for instance, be given to the youth, except disorientation, by the revelation of the "counterrevolution in the USSR in the '30s", of the "blame" of Stalin for the accession to power by fascism and Hitler in Germany, or by the public "counting" of the number of "Stalinists" among various generations and social groups?

We are inhabitants of Leningrad, and therefore we recently watched a good documentary about S.M. Kirov with particular interest.

However, the text, accompanying the stills, not only differed from the scenes of the film in some passages, but also gave them some ambiguity. For one thing, the stills demonstrate the outburst of enthusiasm, the joy of living, and the emotional upsurge of people who have built socialism, but the announcer's text refers to repression and ignorance....
Probably, it was evident not only to me that the appeals of party leaders to turn the attention of the "denouncers" also to the facts of real achievements at different stages of socialist construction call forth new outbreaks of "disclosures" as if on order. Noticeable in this unfruitful play are the plays of M. Shatrov. On the day when the 26th Congress of the party opened, I had occasion to see the performance of Blue Horses on Red Grass. I remember the excited reaction of the young people in the episode of Lenin's secretary trying to pour water on Lenin's head from a teakettle, having confused it with an unfinished sculptural model. By the way, some young people came with slogan boards, which had been prepared beforehand and meant to besmirch our past and present. In the play Brest Peace Lenin kneels to Trotsky according to the will of the playwright and the director. This is a symbolic embodiment of the author's conception. It is subsequently developed in the play Farther, Farther and Farther! Of course, a play is not a historic treatise. However, even in artistic production, truth is provided by none other than the position of the author. It is particularly so if dramatic works on political subjects are referred to.

The position of playwright Shatrov is analysed thoroughly and in a well-reasoned way in the reviews of scholars-historians published in the newspapers Pravda and Soviet Russia *. I would also like to express my opinion. I cannot agree specifically to the fact that Shatrov substantially deviates from the accepted principles of socialist realism. Dealing with the most responsible period in the history of our country, he absolutizes the subjective factor of social progress, obviously ignores the objective laws of history which are manifested in the activity of the classes and masses. The role of the proletarian masses and the party of Bolsheviks is brought down here to the "background" in which the activities of irresponsible politicians are being unfolded.
The reviewers, resting upon the Marxist-Leninist methodology of the investigation of concrete historic processes, convincingly testified that Shatrov distorts the history of socialism in our country. The unacceptable object is the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, without the historic contribution of which there would be nothing to reorganize for us now. Furthermore, the author accuses Stalin of the murder of Trotsky and Kirov and of the "blockade" of sick Lenin. However, it is really inconceivable to throw biased accusations against historic figures, without taking trouble to show evidence....

Unfortunately, the reviewers did not succeed in showing that the playwright is not original for all his pretensions as an author. It seemed to me that in the logic of his appraisal and argument he was very close to the motif of B. Suvarin's book published in Paris in 1935. In the play Shatrov put into the mouths of the characters what had been asserted by the opponents of Leninism concerning the course of the revolution, Lenin's role in it and the mutual relations of the members of the Party Central Committee at different stages of inner-party struggle. Such is the essence of Shatrov's "new perusal" about Lenin. I would like to add that A. Rybakov, author of Children of the Arbat, also frankly admitted that individual plots had been borrowed by Shatrov from emigrant publications.
Without reading the play Farther, Farther and Farther! (it was not published) I had already read laudatory responses to it in some publications. What could such haste mean? Then I knew that hasty preparations were being made to put the play on the stage.
Soon after the February Plenary Meeting in Pravda a letter was published which was entitled "Along a New Circle" and signed by our eight leading theatrical figures. They warn against the possible, according to their opinion, delay in the staging of M. Shatrov's latest play. This conclusion is made from the critical appreciations of the play which had appeared in newspapers. The authors of the letter put, for some reason, the authors of the critical reviews outside the brackets of those "for whom the fatherland is dear." How does it go with their wish to discuss the problems of our ancient and recent history "stormily and passionately?" Do they mean that only they may have their opinion?**
In the numerous discussions now being held literally on all problems of sociology, I, as an instructor of a higher educational institution, am interested first of all in those problems which directly exert influence on the ideological and political education of the young people, their moral health and their social optimism. Talking to students, meditating on acute problems together with them, I involuntarily come to the conclusion that many shortcomings and one-sidedness have been accumulated in us, something which evidently needs to be corrected. I would like to dwell especially on some of them.

Let us take the problem about the place of J.V. Stalin in the history of our country. Namely with his name is connected all the obsession of the critical attacks which, in my opinion, concerns not so much the very historic person as all the most complicated transitional period, a period which has to do with the unparalleled exploit of the whole generation of the Soviet people who are now gradually moving away from active working, political and social activity. The industrialization, collectivization and cultural revolution which have led out our country to the ranks of the great powers, are forcibly being crammed into the formula of "personality cult". All this is put under doubt. Things have come to such an extent that they have begun to persistently demand "Stalinists” to "confess". (It is possible to include in their number anyone if it is desired to do so).... Praises are showered upon the novels and films in which the era of storm and onslaught is lynched being described as the "tragedy of the people." It is true that sometimes similar attempts to erect historic nihilism on the pedestal do not work. So, a film which is rained with kisses of criticism, is sometimes accepted rather coldly by the majority of the population in spite of the unprecedented publicity pressing.
I would like to mention straight away that neither I nor other members of my family have any relation with Stalin, with his surroundings, his retinue and with his extollers. My father was a worker of the Leningrad Port and my mother was a metal worker at Kirov Factory. My elder brother also worked there. He, my father and sister were killed in the battles against the Hitlerites. One of my relatives had been repressed and after the 20th Congress of the party he was rehabilitated. Together with all the Soviet people I share wrath and indignation for the mass repression which took place in the 30s and 40s because of the fault of the then party and state leadership. However, common sense resolutely protests against the one-colour painting of contradictory events which has now begun to prevail in some press organs.
I support the party's call to defend the honour and dignity of the pioneers of socialism. I think that precisely from these party and class positions we should appraise the historic role of all the leaders of the party and the country including Stalin. In this case we should not reduce the matter to the "court" aspect or to abstract moral propaganda from the side of those persons who are far both from that stormy time but from people who lived and worked at that time so that it serves as an inspiring example for us even now.

For me, like for many people, a decisive role in the appraisal of Stalin is played by the direct evidences of the contemporaries who had firsthand contact with him both on our side and on the other side of the barricade. Not uninteresting are just the evidences of the latter. Take, for instance, Churchill, who in 1919 took pride in his personal contribution to the organization of military intervention of 14 foreign states against the young Soviet Republic, but exactly after forty years was compelled to characterize Stalin, one of his menacing political opponents, as follows:
"He was an outstanding person impressing our severe time of the period in which his life elapsed. Stalin was a man of exceptional energy, erudition and unbending willpower, harsh, strict and relentless as in work, as well as talk, whom even I, educated in English parliament, could not oppose in any way. In his works gigantic strength was resounded. In Stalin this strength was so great that he seemed unique among the leaders of all times and peoples. His influence over people was irresistible. When he entered the hall of the Yalta Conference, all of us stood up as if at someone' s command. A strange thing is that we stood at attention. Stalin possessed profound, logical and intelligent wisdom devoid of any panic. He was a peerless master able to find, at a difficult moment, a way out of the most hopeless situation…. This was a man who destroyed his enemy with the hands of his enemies, and forced us, whom he openly called imperialists, to fight against imperialists He took over Russia from a wooden plough, and left it equipped with atomic weapons". Such an appraisal-confession on the part of a loyal guardsman of the British empire cannot be explained as a pretence or political conjuncture.

The basic elements of this characteristic can be found also in the memoirs of De Gaulle and in the reminiscences and letters of other political figures of Europe and America, who dealt with Stalin as a military ally and a class enemy.
Important and serious material for meditation on the given problem is given by home documents, which are, moreover, available for all comers. Take, for instance, the two-volume edition Letters of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Exchanged with the Presidents of the USA and the Prime-Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, issued by the Publishing House of Political Books already in 1957. These documents really call forth pride in our state and in its place and role in the stormy and changing world. I remember the collection of reports, speeches and orders given by Stalin in the years of the last war with which the heroic generation of those who won victory over fascism were educated. It may well be republished with the inclusion of those documents which were secret at that time, such as the dramatic order No. 227. *** By the way, some historians insist on doing so. All these documents are not known to our young people. What is particularly important for the education of historic consciousness is the memoirs of generals Zhukov, Vasilevsky, Golovanov and Shtemenko and aircraft designer Yakovlev who knew the Supreme Commander-in-Chief not by hearsay.

It goes without saying that the time was extremely severe. And it is also true that personal modesty, amounting to asceticism, was not yet ashamed of itself, and that the potential Soviet millionaires still feared to peck in the tranquility of demoted offices and commercial bases. Moreover, we were not so business-like and pragmatic and did not prepare the young people for the niceties of using the wealth earned by their parents, but for labour and defence, without shattering their spiritual world with alien chef d'oeuvres from behind the "hillock" and with clumsy articles of mass culture.
From the long and frank talks with young interlocutors, we draw such conclusions that the attacks on the state of dictatorship of the proletariat and the then leaders of our country have not only political, ideological and moral causes, but also their own social subsoil.
There are not a small number of those who are interested in expanding the bridgehead of these attacks, and they are not only beyond the boundaries of our country. Side by side with the professional anti-communists in the West, who chose the allegedly democratic slogan of "anti-Stalinism" a long time ago, there live and prosper the descendants of the classes overthrown by the October Revolution, not all of whom could forget the material and social losses of their ancestors.

We should relate to this the spiritual heirs to Dan and Martov and others of the department of Russian social-democratism, the spiritual followers of Trotsky and Yagoda, and the offspring of nepmen, Basmaches and kulaks who were offended by socialism.

As is known, every historic figure is developed by concrete socio-economic and ideological and political conditions, which exert a decisive influence on the subjective-objective selection of the pretenders whose mission is to solve some or other social problems. Such a pretender who had moved forward to the proscenium of history should, in order "to remain afloat", satisfy the requirements of the era and the leading social and political structures and realize in his activity objective law, having inevitably left the "imprint" of his personality on historic events. In the final analysis, for instance, there are now a few of those who are embarrassed by the personal qualities of Peter the Great, but everyone remembers that during the period of his rule the country reached the level of a great European power. Time has condensed the result, which lies now in the appraisal of the historic personality of Emperor Peter. And the invariable flowers on his sarcophagus at the cathedral of Petropavlovsk Fortress embody the respect and gratitude of our contemporaries who are distant from autocracy.

I think that, however contradictory and complicated one or another figure of Soviet history may be, its true role in the building and defence of socialism will receive its objective and unequivocal appraisal sooner or later. Of course, unequivocal not in the sense of one-sided, whitewashing or eclectically summarizing discrepant phenomena, which allows one to make with reserves any subjectivism-"to forgive or not to forgive", "to throw out or to leave" in history. Unequivocal means, before anything else, historically concrete appraisal independent of conjuncture, in which is manifested -according to historic result! - dialectics of conformity of the activity of personality with the basic laws of the development of society. In our country these laws were connected with the solution of the problem "who will beat whom?" in the internal and international aspects. If we are to follow the Marxist-Leninist methodology of historic investigation, then, according to M.S. Gorbachev, it is necessary, before anything else, to show strikingly how millions of people lived and worked and in what they believed, and how the victories and failures, discoveries and mistakes, the bright and tragic, the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses and the violations of socialist law, at times crimes, were combined.

Recently one of my girl students puzzled me by frankly saying that the class struggle was an antiquated conception, like the leading role of the proletariat. It would be all right if only she asserted that. The recent assertion of a respected academician to the effect that the present relations between the states of two different social and economic systems have been deprived of class content, for example, provoked fierce controversy. I assume that the academician did not consider it necessary to explain why he had for decades written about what is directly opposite to this- that peaceful coexistence is nothing else but a form of class struggle in the international arena. It appears that now the philosopher has declined this. Why, views sometimes change. However, I think that the duty of a leading philosopher enjoins him all the same to explain at least to those who learned and are learning according to his books, that the international working class is now countering world capital with its state and political organs.

At the centre of many discussions now being held, there stands, as it seems to me, the question: which class or stratum of society is the leading and mobilizing force of perestroika? Something was said about this, in particular, in the interview of writer A. Prokhanov in our city newspaper Leningrad Worker. Prokhanov proceeds from it that the peculiarity of the present status of social consciousness is characterized by the presence of two ideological currents, or, as he says, "alternative towers", which attempt, from various directions, to overcome in our country "socialism built in battles". Exaggerating the significance and sharpness of mutual antagonism between these "towers", the writer, nevertheless, justly emphasizes that "they agree only in the beating of socialist values". However, both, as their ideologues assure, stand "for perestroika".

The first, the deepest ideological current, which has already revealed itself in the course of perestroika, pretends to the model of a sort of Left-liberal intellectual socialism, the alleged mouthpiece of the most veritable and the "purest" humanism free from class stratification. Its supporters oppose to proletarian collectivism the "self-value of personality"- with modernist searches in the field of culture, God-seeking tendencies, technocratic idols, preaching of "democratic" charms of modem capitalism, and flatteries of its real and sham achievements. Its representatives assert that we have built no such socialism and that only now "for the first time in history the union of political leadership and progressive intelligentsia has been formed". At the time when millions of people in our planet die of hunger, epidemics and military adventures of imperialism, they demand to work out a "juridical code of the defence of animals’ rights", give nature unusual, supernatural intelligence and maintain that cultural level is not a social, but a biological quality, which is genetically passed from parents to children. Will you explain to me what all this means?
Namely the supporters of "Left-liberal socialism" form the tendency of falsification of the history of socialism. They instil into us that in the past history of the country only mistakes and crimes were real, keeping silence about the greatest achievments of the past and the present. Pretending to the completeness of historic truth, they substitute the social and political criterion of the development of society with scholasticism of ethical categories. I want to know very much for whom and for what it is necessary so that every leader of the CC of the Party and the Soviet government, after leaving his post, was compromised and discredited in connection with his real and alleged mistakes and errors committed in solving the most complicated problems on bad historic roads. From where did come to us such passion for the dissipation of the authority and dignity of the leaders of the first country of socialism in the world?
Another peculiarity of the views of the "Left liberals" is an evident or disguised cosmopolitan tendency, certain "internationalism" without something national. I read somewhere that when after the revolution a delegation of merchants and factory owners came to the Petrograd Soviet, to Trotsky "as a Jew", to lodge a complaint about the oppression of the Red Guards, he declared that he was "not a Jew, but an internationalist", and thus he greatly perplexed the petitioners.

The concept "national", for Trotsky, meant something which has inferiority and limitation in comparison with "internationalism". And, therefore, he emphasized the "national tradition" of October, wrote about "national in Lenin", asserted that the Russian people "did not receive any cultural legacy" and the like. We are somehow ashamed to say that namely the Russian proletariat, whom Trotskyites slighted as being "backward and uncivilized", accomplished, according to Lenin, "three Russian revolutions", and that the Slav peoples advanced in the van of mankind in the battles against fascism.

As a matter of course, saying so does not mean any belittling of the historic contribution of other nations and nationalities. This, as they say today, oply ensures the completeness of historic truth.... When the students ask me how it could happen that thousands of small villages in Nechernozem and Siberia became deserted, I answer that this is also a dear price for victory and for the postwar rehabilitation of the national economy, like the irrevocable losses of a large amount of memorials of the Russian national culture. And I still believe that from belittling the significance of historic consciousness springs pacifistic washing away of defensive and patriotic consciousness, and also the striving for recording the slightest manifestations of national pride of Great Russians in the column of maniacal great-power chauvinism. The "denial" of socialism is connected with militant cosmopolitism. Unfortunately, we became aware of this only when its neophytes were an eyesore to us with their outrages in front of Smolny or under the walls of the Kremlin. And what is more, they somehow train us gradually to see in the mentioned phenomenon some almost inoffensive change of "residence", but not the class and national betrayal of those the majority of whom have finished higher educational institutions and post-graduate studentship with our public means. In general, some people are inclined to see the "denial" as some manifestation of "democracy" and the "rights of a man" whose talent was prevented from blossoming out because of "stagnant socialism". Well, if, even there, in the "free world", the seething enterprise and "genius" are not appreciated and the bargaining of conscience is not of interest for the intelligence agencies, they may come back....

As is generally known, according to the concrete historic role, K. Marx and F. Engels called whole nations "counterrevolutionary" at a definite epoch of their history- I emphasize, not classes, not estates, but namely nations. On the foundation of class viewpoint they were not ashamed to give sharp characteristics to a number of nations, including the Russians, Poles, and also to those nationalities to which they themselves belonged. The founders of scientific-proletarian world outlook remind us that, in the fraternal concord of the Soviet peoples every nation and nationality should "cherish honour ever since youth", not allow itself to be provoked to national and chauvinistic frames of mind.

The national pride and national dignity of each people should be organically combined with the internationalism of the single socialist society.

If the "neo-liberals" orientate themselves to the West, another "alternative tower", according to Prokhanov's expression, the "protectors and traditionalists", strive "to overcome socialism by backward movement". In other words, they strive to return to the social forms of pre-socialist Russia. The representatives of this peculiar "peasant socialism" are charmed by this mode. According to their opinion, a hundred years ago there was a loss of moral values, accumulated in the haze of centuries of peasant community. The "traditionalists" have unquestionable merits in the exposure of corruption, in the fair solution of ecological problems, in the struggle against alcoholism, in the defence of historic memorials, in the fight against the dominance over mass culture, which is justly appreciated as the psychosis of consumption....
At the same time, in the views of the ideologues of "peasant socialism" there are found the misunderstanding of the historic significance of October for the destiny of the fatherland, one-sided appraisal of collectivization as "terrible tyranny in relation to the peasantry", uncritical views of the religious mystic Russian philosophy, old tsarist conceptions of the historic science of the mother country, unwillingness to see the post-revolutionary stratification of the peasantry and the revolutionary role of the working class.

In the class struggle in the countryside, for instance, here not infrequently protrude "rural" commissars who "shot the backs of middle peasants". In the vast country awakened by the revolution there were, of course, all sorts of commissars. However, the basic fairway of our life was defined all the same by those commissars who were shot. It was namely they from whose backs stars were cut out, and who were burnt alive. It was necessary to pay the "attacking class" not only with the lives of commissars, Cheka members, rural Bolsheviks, members of the committees of poor peasants, the "participants in the movement of twenty thousand", but also of the first tractor operators, rural correspondents, girl-teachers, rural members of the Komsomol, and with the lives of tens of thousands of other unknown fighters for socialism.

The complication of the education of the young people is still redoubled by the fact that informal organizations and societies are springing up along the channel of the ideas of the "neo-liberals" and "neo-Slavophiles". Sometimes it so happens that in their leadership the extremist elements inclined to provocations got the upper hand.
Recently politicization of these amateur organizations formed on the basis of pluralism, which is far from being socialist, has been appearing. Not infrequently the leaders of these organizations talk about the "sharing of power" on the basis of a "parliamentary regime", "free trade unions", an "autonomous publishing house" and the like. All this, in my opinion, allows one to make the conclusion that the main and cardinal question of the discussions now being held in the country is the problem of whether to recognize or not to recognize the leading role of the party and the working class in socialist construction, that is, in perestroika. It goes without saying, with all the ensuing theoretical and practical conclusions for policy, economy and ideology.
Derivative from this key problem of socio-historical world outlook is the problem of the role of socialist ideology in the spiritual development of Soviet society. To add one thing, this problem was sharpened as long ago as the end of 1917 by K. Kautsky who declared in one of his pamphlets, dedicated to October, that socialism distinguishes itself by iron-like planned character and discipline in economy and by anarchy in ideology and in spiritual life. This called forth rejoicing from Mensheviks, socialist-revolutionaries and other petty-bourgeois ideologists, but found resolute rebuff in Lenin and his companions, who consistently defended, as they said at that time, the "commanding heights" of scientific-proletarian ideology.

Let us remember: when V.L Lenin collided with the manipulations of sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, popular at that time for the statistics of divorces among the Petrograd inhabitants, and with religion-protective writings of professor Vipper (which, by the way, looked absolutely naive in comparison with what is now being published in our country), then he, explaining the appearance of their works by the inexperience of the then workers in the mass media, ascertained that the "working class in Russia succeeded in winning power, but had not yet learned to make use of it."In an opposite case, Vladimir Ilych pointed out, the revolutionary proletariat would "politely send" out of the country these professors and writers who "did not fit in for the education of the masses as notorious degenerates not fitting for the role of head for junior students at the educational institutions". By the way, out of the 164 people who were expelled at the end of 1922 according to the list of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, many came back afterwards and honestly served their people; professor Vipper is among them.

Like this, today the question of the role and place of socialist ideology has assumed an extremely sharp form. The authors of timeserving articles soften down the edges and criteria of scientific ideology on the plea of moral and spiritual "purification", and, manipulating glasnost, spread non-socialist pluralism, which objectively impedes perestroika in social consciousness. This especially affects the young people badly, which, I repeat, is distinctly felt by us, instructors of higher educational institutions, teachers of schools and all those who are engaged in youth problems. M.S. Gorbachev said at the February Plenary Meeting of the CC of the CPSU, "We should in the spiritual sphere, too, maybe, namely here in the first place, act, guided by our Marxist-Leninist principles. Comrades, we should not give up principles under any pretexts."

We stand and will stand on this. Principles have not been given to us, but have been gained by us through much suffering at the stern turning-points of the history of the fatherland. ****
Soviet Russia, March 13, 1988, p. 2

* In their article "What Do We Want to See in the Mirror of the Revolution?" doctors of historic science V. Gorbunov and V. Zhuravlev wrote that in the play of Mikhail Shatrov Farther, Farther and Farther! dedicated to the party of Lenin, "The historic role of this party as the leading force of the revolution in the building of socialism is not shown.

There are individual figures of the party, but the only thing they do is that they commit mistakes, quarrel among themselves, intrigue against each other, and accuse each other. All the positive activity of the vanguard of the working people who ensured the world-historic victory of the October Revolution and on the fronts of the civil war, built socialism and defended it in an unparalleled way in the Great Patriotic War, and then revived the country on the ruins and ashes, slipped out of the field of the author's vision.

"Shatrov insists," the reviewers emphasize, "as if Stalin like a demon, succeeded in resisting the natural laws and the requirements of socialist construction, in turning away the country from the main historic course, in degenerating the country, as a result of which the voice of the revolution becomes pressed down or barely audible. It is difficult to agree with such an interpretation of the basic laws of "Social development." (Soviet Russia, January 28, 1988).
In their publication Only Truth Is Not under Jurisdiction historians-professors G. Gerasimenko, O. Obichkin and B. Popov note that in the dramatic composition of Mikhail Shatrov "the whole course of the construction of socialism in our country is represented as cabinet argument in extremely confused historic context where there are no enemies, no allies, no Rightists and no ones who are guilty; there are the accused Bolsheviks and their judges-the White generals, Mensheviks and the socialist-revolutionaries". "Consciously mixing up the chronological logic, in order to penetrate into the essence of the events of 70-year remoteness, the author does not notice that in this confusion into the artistic tissue of the play penetrates unhistoric character which is vividly manifested in the attempt to put the appraisal of what is happening now into the mouth of V.I. Lenin. (Pravda, February 15, 1988.)

** In their letter "Along a New Circle" K. Lavrov, M. Ulyanov, G. Tovstonogov, M. Zakharov, A Goncharov, V. Rozov, A. Gelyman and O. Yefremov wrote:
"Indeed, our country has achieved perestroika and glasnost through much suffering.

Therefore, any attempts to turn the process back, no matter with how lofty slogans they cover themselves, give rise to profound anxiety. The critical campaign concerning M. Shatrov's new play Farther, Farther and Farther! called forth namely such anxiety from us. Unlike some historians we think that in an artistic work Lenin appearing there not only can but also must appraise the present socialism and everything we are now doing." (Pravda, February 29,1988).
The editorial article summing up the discussion states: "Pravda not only considers it necessary to have a careful and most respectful attitude toward the creative work of the intelligentsia in the field of art, but also maintains the right of the Soviet community to give their view regarding it publicly." (Ibid.)

*** The order No. 227 of the People's Commissar of Defence of the USSR dated July 28, 1942 is published in the Soviet press since August 1988. It notes as follows, in particular: "The enemy is throwing more and more new, forces into the front and, regardless of his great losses, moves forward, breaks deep into the Soviet Union, seizes new regions, devastates and destroys our towns and villages, rapes women and plunders and kills Soviet inhabitants.
"Don't move even a step backward! Now this should be our main slogan. We should stubbornly defend each position and each metre of the Soviet territory until our last drop of blood, cling to each patch of the Soviet land and defend it till the last possibility. Our motherland is going through hard days. We should stop the enemy, and then throw him back and rout him at whatever costs. Germans are not so strong as it seems to the panic-mongers. They are straining their last strength. If we endure their thrust now, in the next several months we will win the victory".
And, as is generally known, such a victory was won in Stalingrad.

**** The article called forth diverse reaction in society and in the CPSU. V. Legostayev, former responsible worker of the Party Central Committee, writes that AN.Yakovlev who was then visiting Mongolia "decided on the spot to hand in an application for his resignation to the General Secretary of the CC of the CPSU". Speaking at the secretariat of the Party Central Committee on March 15, E.K. Ligachev said that "on Sunday, newspaper Soviet Russia published an interesting article of Andreyeva from Leningrad. The material is not accidental. I request the comrades of editors-in-chief to pay attention to it." On March 23 and 24 the Political Bureau, at Gorbachev's request, "dealt with Nina Andreyeva, putting aside state affairs. In the end the General Secretary got each of the participants at the conference to refuse to acknowledge, in some way or other, the propositions of the article of N.A Andreyeva who was not known to anyone of them. The article entitled 'The Principles of Perestroika: the Revolutionary Character of Thought and Action' which was prepared by AN. Yakovlev for Pravda, was published on April
5,1988". (Newspaper Day, No. 16, August 1991, p. 3.).

In this article, which was called an editorial later on, no mention was made of the names either of Andreyeva who was criticized, or of Yakovlev, the author-critic, Secretary of the CC of the CPSU. This critical ideological document of the CPSU, which was so splendidly prepared, noted that the article "I Cannot Give Up Principles" raised "serious problems even in such a key point which cannot be called other than the ideological platform and manifesto of anti-perestroika forces Perhaps, in this 'Letter to the Editorial note that the eulogy on Stalin cited in the article does not belong to Churchill by any means. Something similar was said by I. Doicher, a well-known English Trotskyite. However, in any case naturally the question arises: Is it tactful to apply to bourgeois sources unscrupulously in the appraisal of the leaders, the prominent figures of our party and state?"

In the transport of inspiration by pluralism, the Secretary of the CC of the CPSU not only irresponsibly substituted Doicher for Churchill, but also distorted the only quotation from the article of Andreyeva who was being criticized, the quotation which was adduced by him in his "document of the CC of the CPSU."

***