ia_2011_f_beiboutov

=List of Sources (non included in word count) Tips]=

//Stalin and Khrushchev The USSR, 1924-64// Michael Lynch //Stalin and the Soviet Union// Stephen J. Lee //Stalin and the Soviet Union// Jim Grant

[|www.johndclare.net/Russ9.htm] [] ** //Children of the Arbat// by A. Rybakov (this had been suppressed in the USSR for twenty years before being published in Britain in 1989) ** “Stalin mused… Yes, the history of mankind was the history of class struggle, but the leader emerged as the expression of class, and therefore the history of mankind was the history of its leaders and its rulers. Idealism did bit come into it. The spirit of an epoch was determined by the man who made the epoch himself…

… all opponents, past, present and future, had to be liquidated and would be liquidated. The sole socialist country in the world could survive only if it were unshakably stable, and this would also be seen as a sign of its stability by the outside world. The state must be strong in case of war; the state must be mighty if it wants peace. It must be feared:;

In order to turn a peasant society into an industrialized country, countless material and human sacrifices were necessary. The people must accept this. But it would not be achieved by enthusiasm alone. The people would have to be forced to accept the sacrifices, and for this a powerful authority was needed, and authority that inspired fear… the theory of undying class was provided for all such possibilities. If a few million people had to perish in the process, history would forgive Comrade Stalin… All great rulers had been harsh.”

Official Soviet reply to British proposals for an agreenment with the Soviet Union, 15 may 1939

“The Soviet Government have given careful consideration to the latest proposals of the British Governemnt, which were communicated to them on May 8, and they have come to the conclusion that these proposals cannot serve as a basis for the organization of a front of resistance against further extension of aggression in Europe. This conclusion is based on the following considerations:

(1) The English proposals do not contain principles of reciprocrity with regard to the USSR and place the latter in apposition of inequality, inasmuch as they do not contemplate an obligation by Britain and France to guarantee the USSR in the event of a direct attck on the latter by aggressors, whereas England and France, as well as Poland enjoy such a guarantee as a result of reciprocity which exists between them. (2) The English proposals only extend a guarantee to Eastern European states bordering the USSR, to Poland and to Romania, as a consequence of which the North Western frontier of the USSR towards Finland, Estonia and Latvia remains uncovered. (3) On the one hand, the absence of a guarantee to the USSR on the part of England and France, in the event of a direct attack by an aggression in the direction of the Soviet Union.” “The Government of the German Reich and the Government of the USSR, desirious of strengthening the cause of peace between Germany and the USSR, have reached the following agreement.
 * Extracts from the Nazi – Soviet Non – Aggression Pact, August 1939 **

Article I. Both High Contracting Parties obligate themselves to desist from any act of violence, any aggressive action, and any attack on each other, either individually or jointly with other powers.

Article II. Should one of the High Contracting Parties become the object of belligerent action by a third power, the other High Contracting Party shall in no manner lend its support to this third party.

Article III. The Governments of the two High Contracting Parties shall in the future maintain continual contact with one another for the purpose of consultation in order to exchange information of problems affecting their common interest…

Article IV. Should disputes of conflicts arise between the High Contracting Parties, both Parties should settle these disputes exclusively through friendly exchange information of problems affecting their common interest. **Lenin’s Testament Lenin, 25 December 1922**
 * [Source: Lenin, //Collected Works//, vol. 36 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), pp. 594-596.] **

By the stability of the Central Committee, of which I spoke above, I mean measures against a split, as far as such measures can at all be taken. For, of course, the whiteguard in Russkaya Mys (it seems to have been S. S. Oldenburg) was right when, first, in the whiteguards' game against Soviet Russia he banked on a split in our Party, and when, secondly, he banked on grave differences in our Party to cause that split. Our Party relies on two classes and therefore its instability would be possible and its downfall inevitable if there were no agreement between those two classes. In that event, this or that measure, and generally all talk about the stability of our C.C., would be futile. No measures of any kind could prevent a split in such a case. But I hope that this is too remote a future and too improbable an event to talk about. I have in mind stability as a guarantee against a split in the immediate future, and I intend to deal here with a few ideas concerning personal qualities. I think that from this standpoint, the prime factors in the question of stability are such members of the C.C. as Stalin and Trotsky. I think relations between them make up the greater part of the danger of a split, which could be avoided, and this purpose, in my opinion, would be served, among other things, by increasing the number of C.C. members to 50 or 100. Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky*, on the other hand, as his struggles against the C.C. on the question of the People's Commissariat for Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C., but he has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work. These two qualities of the two outstanding leaders of the present C.C. can inadvertently lead to a split, and if our Party does not take steps to avert this, the split may come unexpectedly. I shall not give any further appraisals of the personal qualities of other members of the C.C. I shall just recall that the October episode with Zinoviev and Kamenev was, of course, no accident, but neither can the blame for it be laid upon them personally, any more than non-Bolshevism can upon Trotsky. Speaking of the young C.C. members, I wish to say a few words about Bukharin and Pyatakov. They are, in my opinion, the most outstanding figures (among the younger ones), and the following must be borne in mind about them: Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favorite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with the great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of dialectics, and, I think, never fully appreciated it). December 25. As for Pyatakov, he is unquestionably a man of outstanding will and outstanding ability, but shows far too much zeal for administrating and the administrative side of the work to be relied upon in a serious political matter. Both of these remarks, of course, are made only for the present, on the assumption that both these outstanding and devoted Party workers fail to find an occasion to enhance their knowledge and amend their one-sidedness. * * * * *  Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest the comrades think about a way of removing Staling from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite, and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split, and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky, it is not a detail, or it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.