Vijay Singh
The newspaper Proletarii in a special issue announced that the first congress of the A-UCWG(B) was held in Moscow on the 21st October, 1995 with the participation of communist revolutionaries from Leningrad, Moscow and other cities. The A-UCWG(B) is the first communist revolutionary organisation established after the fall of the USSR. As a result its significance is not confined to the Soviet Union but has international ramifications. Three Reports were presented in the Congress and after discussion the programme of the A-UCWG(B) (this has been published in its draft form in Revolutionary Democracy Vol. 1, No. 1). The draft constitution was discussed and the Central Leadership was elected.
In the first report, presented by V. Somov which was entitled 'The Revolutionary Struggle of the Working Class of the USSR and the Revolutionary Struggle of Our Party in the Workers' Movement', it was noted that the counter-revolution in the USSR had been led from above by Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko. It had removed the working class from power, ended the dictatorship of the proletariat and led to the exploitation of the working class. After 1991 the working class had been pre-occupied in the struggle for economic survival in the face of the inflation unleashed by the policies of Haidar and Chernomyrdin. In the wave of strikes which had taken place the most prominent was the strike of one million miners in 230 pits in the Ukraine in June 1993. The dissolution of the Soviets in September 1993 led to the democratic uprising in Moscow in September and October 1993. Workers in large numbers participated in these events which had a basically unarmed character. The collective farm peasantry, the lower administrative staff and the small bourgeoisie also took part. At the heart of the struggle of the working class was Trudovoya Rossiya which bore the brunt of the attacks of the militia, the OMON, in a number of confrontations in 1992 and 1993. The armed people's uprising in the autumn of 1993 represented the peak of the political struggle of the working class. The struggle at the Ostankino (TV Tower), the piercing of the blockade of the House of the Soviets, the defence of the House of the Soviets from the bourgeois militia, saw the high class qualities of the working class, heroism, stoicism, decisiveness and above all collective proletarian revolutionism. The uprising came about as a result of the secret bargains of the bourgeois groups of Rutskoi and Yeltsin, despite this the workers did not leave the barricades of the House of the Soviets. The worker-hero Ivan Vylkov flung himself before an approaching tank carrying a Molotov cocktail and perished. An important example of armed struggle in 1991-1993 were the battles between the Pridniester Republic under the Red Flag for the remnants of Soviet power against the bourgeois-nationalist Moldavian Republic army and their Rumanian supporters.
In 1994 traumatism increased by 1.5 times in the metallurgical industry. Some 594 workers in production perished at work, 94 alone in the mines of the Kuznetsk Basin. The ultimate source of these developments is the contradiction between the interests of the bourgeoisie and the working class. Throughout 1993 and 1994 strike movements took place in Gorky, Moscow, Leningrad, Novgorod, in the Buryat and Kuzbass minepits. According to ILO statistics there are 5,400,000 unemployed in Russia. Life expectation of workers has come down in Russia and is lower than amongst the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy. 1995 has seen a rash of strikes amongst the Soviet working class, in Karaganda (Kazakhstan SSR), Rostov-on-Don, Vorkuts, Tula, Omsk, the Sakhalin mines and the oilworkers of Usinsk.
Russian imperialism marches forward. Russia occupied third position in the world for arms sales in 1995. The rapacious Russian imperialism faces the competition of the USA and NATO as Yeltsin's speech at the UN General Assembly indicated. Under Yeltsin the industry of the Russian capitalism is now advancing, experts anticipate its fast growth and expansion in 1996 by about ten per cent. The new Russian bourgeoisie plunders the Soviet working class. The 'Inkombank' holds second place in the world for the growth of profits. With privatisation the past labour of the Soviet working class has been filched and living labour is being stolen. The consciousness of the working class about their exploitation grows, particularly amongst the miners of Kuzbass, the Maritime Province, the Donbas and Tula.
In the two years since 1993 class contradictions have strengthened. The Russian bourgeoisie has become imperialist and the working class of Russia has become a proletariat. The collective farm peasantry have become hired workers, poor peasants, middle peasants and kulak farmers. The administrative staff have become bureaucrats. The chief class is the bourgeoisie which is legalised to the level of the dominant class defending and strengthening the bourgeois constitution of Yeltsin. The workers go to work hungry and return home ill (if at work). A working class which was victorious and had the USSR Constitution is now struggling. At the centre of the bourgeois Russian Federation stands the bourgeois government constituted of bureaucrats which is defended by the bourgeois army.
Today Russia does not have a revolutionary working class Bolshevik Party. The Russian Communist Workers' Party which has been in the thick of the struggles is not a revolutionary party as it does not aim for the establishment of the dictatorship of the working class but for 'worker's power' and 'socialist democracy' (as did Khrushchev and Brezhnev) and is not built on Bolshevik organisational Principles. The A-UCWG(B) tactically is united with the RCWP despite its deviations to nationalism, anarchism, reformism and spontaneity.
The A-UCWG(B) is the only party in the USSR which is a united revolutionary working class party expressing the class interests of the working class, a party of revolutionary Bolshevism, a party which stands on the principles of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. The party understands that the present possibilities of legal and semi-legal work exist because of the bourgeois democratic system. This will become impossible under conditions of fascism coming to power. Therefore the working of the party in the working class will utilise non-legal methods of work. By creating illegal Worker's Soviets the party will be able to initiate strike action and avoid the dismissal of revolutionary worker activists. The A-UCWG(B) works in the workers' movement and with all organisations which defend the interest of the working class, beginning from the reactionary trade unions.
The working class of the RSFSR in the Chechen part of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR plays off Russia and Checheniya. Russian imperialism kills Chechen workers through the war with the arms of the Russian workers. The Chechen-Ingush ASSR is a part of the USSR. Industrial enterprises are being demolished there and unemployment grows amongst the Chechen workers. The national liberation struggle of the Chechen people is taking place under the leadership of the Chechen bourgeoisie. The imperial war of the Russian bourgeoisie in Checheniya calls forth the mass discontentment of the working class which is in the frontline of the war. There has been no mass fraternisation or uprising of the Russian workers against the Russian command. Trudovaya Rossiya carried out protests against the imperialist war. The mass evasion from service in the bourgeois army is a passive form of protest of the struggle of the working class against the imperialist war. The A-UCWG(B) calls upon the Soviet working class to convert the imperialist war for the profit of the capitalists into a decisive struggle of the revolutionary liberation struggle for socialism and the revolutionary re-establishment of the USSR.
1995 will be a turning point in the workers' movement. It is necessary for the Bolsheviks to be at the head of the movement of the striking workers. The slogan of the party now is 'Bolsheviks - To the Factories!' To go to the factories, organise strikes, strengthen the unity of the working class and its struggles and so in this manner revolutionise the workers movement.
The Report of V. Yasenev 'The Revolutionary Struggle of the A-UCWG(B) outlined the activities of the party and of its youth organisation. The party broke away after internal struggle from the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) led by Nina Andreyeva. It entered into opposition with the revisionist and opportunist parties. The A-UCWG(B) has carried out solidarity actions with the Zapatista army and with the movement in Kurdistan against bourgeois Turkey. The party supports the international announcement of the international conference of the Marxist-Leninist Parties 'A Communist Declaration to the Workers and Peoples of the World', and the Indian journal Revolutionary Democracy which carries a Bolshevik line. Currently the bourgeoisie comes out for the elections to the bourgeois Duma. The social-traitors who are participating in this campaign, such as Zyuganov, are doing so under false citations of Lenin. In the country one pole gravitates to fascism and the other pole moves towards an explosion of a general political strike of the working class. However the opportunists including the now reformist RCWP actually renounce the preparations for a general political strike and is not prepared for a decisive armed struggle under conditions of fascism. The participation of the RCWP in these elections to the bourgeois Duma might shift the Duma to the left but the RCWP itself is deviating towards the right and this will be injurious for the working class struggle. In these conditions our party does not participate in these elections. The central concern of the party is the formation of an anti-fascist front in the country under the leadership of the Bolshevik party of the working class.
N. Kuznetsov presented the Third Report entitled 'The Revolutionary Class Struggle for Workers' Communism in the World'. The struggle continued he said between the working class and the bourgeoisie, between the socialist future and the bourgeois past. The revolutionary struggle is upheld by the international fraternity of the working class and its international organisation of the Marxist-Leninist parties, united in the international conference of the Marxist-Leninist parties which includes the Communist Party of Albania, which is against capitalism and opportunism. The AUCWG(B) subscribes to the 'Communist Declaration To The Workers and Peoples of the World' of August 1994.
After 1917 the epoch of transition from the capitalism of decaying imperialism to workers' socialism and workers' communism began. The transition began from the social production based on factory production and private property to the socialised workers' socialism. The revolutionary working class created its Communist Party and united with the working peasantry in the victorious socialist revolutions.
From 1985 to 1991-2 the bourgeois counter-revolution took place against socialism on the basis of the emerging bourgeoisies which had come up as a result of the development of commodity money relations and from without from the NATO and the EEC which were opposed to the Warsaw Pact and CMEA countries as well as against The People's Socialist Republic of Albania. In 1993-94 the internal civil war for socialism in Mexico advanced. The central revolutionary struggles for socialism are currently taking place in Colombia, Mexico, Eastern Timor, Peru, and Kurdistan. In Colombia the Communist Party of Columbia (M-L) and the National Liberation Army led by Comrade Francisco Caraballo (currently in prison) are carrying out armed struggle. Comrade Caraballo must be freed! In Eastern Timor the partisan warfare for socialism and freedom continues against the Indonesian bourgeoisie. In Peru partisan warfare is taking place led by the Shining Path, a communist party of the maoist type. In Kurdistan the nationalist petty-bourgeois Kurdistan Workers' Party is fighting against the Turkish bourgeois army. In Albania the bourgeoisie has captured power and imprisoned the Communists including the wife of Comrade Enver Hoxha, Nexhmije Hoxha.
The working class in all the capitalist countries struggles against the bourgeoisie through strikes, manifestations, meetings, collisions with the police, factory occupations and spontaneous workers' uprisings. The struggle continues in the USA, the gendarme of world imperialism. Socialist revolution is inevitable in the USA and we support all forces which are in struggle for the overthrow of capitalism in the main imperialist countries. In May and August 1995 the workers' collisions took place with the police in Germany, and in Spain in the month of September. These show that in the main bourgeois states of Western Europe the working class is engaged in struggle activity despite the fact that the reformist and opportunist part of the working class receive a share of the imperialist plunder from the neo-colonies. The Marxist-Leninist parties of Western Europe as yet do not decisively influence the revolutionary struggles of the working class but they will inevitably become revolutionary Bolshevik parties under whose leadership the working class will carry out the proletarian socialist revolution.
War goes on in the territory of bourgeois Yugoslavia between the national bourgeoisies of different republics of the former united state. Collisions are taking place between the pro-US, pro-Russian and pro-Muslim sections. The United States and Russian imperialism struggle for influence in Yugoslavia. The Communists of Yugoslavia must convert the imperialist war into a civil war for socialism: they must be prepared for imperialist intervention.
What is to be done? The preparation for socialist revolution requires the creation of Bolshevik revolutionary parties of the working class which link together the proletarian, revolutionary workers. The Bolshevik parties must be converted into mass parties which must be sharply serving the class requirements of the working class of each country, leading the economic struggles to the political, from reformist politics to the struggle for power. The victory of the socialist revolution requires the necessary class alliance of the revolutionary working class and its party, of the village and urban poor, the semi-proletarians (the poor peasants and administrative staff) and their parties. The unity of the revolutionary organisations of different countries, struggling against capitalism and for socialism - proletarian internationalism - is necessary for victory.
The only revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party in the USSR is the AUCWG(B) which differs from other self-styled Bolsheviks in that it alone prepares the working class for socialist revolution, the taking of power, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of a workers' socialism without commodity production. The course of world revolution shows that to establish the socialist revolution it is necessary to adopt the forcible, armed path, to form the revolutionary dictatorship of the working class right through to the establishment of full workers' Communism. Only the recasting of all non-proletarian working people into workers and revolutionaries, only the elimination of commodity production (eliminating money and exchange) under a non-commodity workers' socialism can led to communism based on one class.
It is necessary to create a Bolshevik Communist Workers' International on the basis of the struggling, international, Marxist-Leninist parties. Such an international would accelerate the revolutionary process and the victory of socialist revolution in all of the countries of the world. According to Lenin it is necessary to create the unity of all countries in a World Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and then the Single Workers' Communist society in the world.
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