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Many of Stalin’s contemporaries say that he was rather ironic about the cult of his personality dominating in the society. In private talks (all of which were talks on the vitally important issues for the country) he encouraged people to take on initiative and the responsibility for this initiative, encouraged this kind of initiative responsibility[296]. One can see it in his written inheritance. In publications as well as in the texts of speeches addressed to various audiences over the years (gathered in his Collected Works) he repeatedly calls for taking on initiative, care and responsibility in the people’s common Life. He also repeatedly notices that simple people’s respect and love of the Party and State leaders is one thing and worshiping the chiefs is a different thing and it should be rooted out in the socialist society.
Neither in Stalin’s oral speeches nor in his written works may you find anything even partially similar to Hitler’s discourses on the chief-Fuhrer and crowd relationships (like, for example, in “Mein Kampf”, for nowadays you may find it in Russian translation without any problem). Nor will you find Lev Gumilev’s discourses on the relationships between chiefs — «people with drive» and the rest of the society[297].
But for anti-Stalinist this only proves that Stalin was much more sly, guileful and hypocritical than Adolph Hitler (together with Lev Gumilev and other sociologists who propagated in other terms the doctrines of leaders and the weak-willed crowd). Nothing can persuade this kind of psycho-Trotskyites that Stalin was against cults of personality, his own cult inclusive. He longed for the society to live on the basis of different morals and comrade ethics, which excluded crowd-“elitism”.
It does not matter what the person subject to this cult worshipping in the crowd-“elitist” society thinks of it. The crowd-“elitist” society by its nature craves for a cult, looks for idols, creates them, gets disappointed in the former idols and sometimes even shifts to the cult of their condemnation, and constantly craves for new idols.
For the society not to be under the cult of any person there should not be any internal or external preconditions of its emergence.
To avoid them the crowd-“elitist” society should stop being crowd-“elitist” and should be based on comrade morals and ethics. The process of transfer from idol-creating morals and ethics of irresponsibility and parasitic smugness to the morals and ethics of initiative comrade care and responsibility for the fates of all and sundry takes historical time. This transfer can happen only through practical activity in solving various problems of life of the society coordinated with solving global problems. This transfer cannot happen through idleness, abstract contemplation and moralizing in churches, at public meetings (including party and trade union meetings), mass manifestations and table talks.
From this viewpoint, the fact that the next 19th regular Congress of the Communist Party took place only in early October 1952 (after the 18th Congress in mid March 1939) does not prove or illustrate that Stalin suppressed democracy in the Party and in the country on the whole. Although in times of Lenin and Bronstein (Trotsky) the Party Congresses took place every year (from the extraordinary 7th Congress in 1918 to 14th in 1925) and even during the Civil War (which anti-Stalinists like to repeat very much to prove the suppression of intra-party democracy), in fact the intra-party democracy did not exist even in those times (though it looked like it was formally maintained).
First, the Party was initially created to perform the political will of the narrow circle of its leaders or of one leader. For this purpose in its Charter there was a special principle of the so-called «democratic centralism»[298], which implies the submission of the minority to the majority and all regular party members’ unconditional execution of the decisions taken by superior party bodies. More and more sundry matters captured the attention of the Party and thus, various projects and their handling were carried out by the machinery under the guidance of a narrow circle of leaders. Maybe Stalin did liquidate the so-called intra-Party democracy but it was the mafia «democracy» of this circle of leaders acting behind the scene of the Central Committee and the rest of the Party, which he liquidated first. After this he liquidated the «leaders» themselves, whose convictions and self-discipline were incompatible with Bolshevism as well as with each other[299].
Second, by the year 1917 the Party was a party of leaders and the Party mass who followed the leaders. As a result of this all the following, Congresses of the Party bore the crowd-“elitist”, but not democratic character. This circumstance was beyond Stalin’s control.
Third, while the Party was becoming the structure to manage the social and economic life of the state, it demanded more and more professionalism and various knowledge from a delegate to start new serious proposals and to soundly criticize the draft projects prepared for the Congress by the Central Committee, which worked on a professional basis and was consulted by the leading specialists in any field of science and technology when necessary. Not to speak of the possibility to write a Five-year Plan of Social and Economic Development of the USSR in the free time as an amateur personal or group initiative.
In these circumstances the Congress was no longer performing the function of collective social creative work, which is the essence of democracy regardless through what procedures it is implemented. As a result of this and of the crowd-“elitist” character of the Party and society on the whole regular Congresses could perform only two functions:
support the cult of the Party leaders in the Party and society;
provide the Party leaders and members of the Central Committee with the information on the opinions of the Party members and non-Party people in the provinces.
While the first function was antidemocratic for the Party and the society on the whole and thus detrimental, the second function of the Party Congresses lost its urgency after illiteracy within the population had been overcome and the structures of the state administration were established. Those who trusted the Soviet statehood would write to the Central Committee, administration organs and to particular Party and State leaders on the issues they considered vital[300]. The opinions of those who did not trust the regime or was its opponent were known to the Party and State leaders either from the letters of those who trusted the Soviet statehood or from the reports of special services and other State and Party bodies.
In other words if the Party Congresses did not supply the information from the provinces any more and did not represent the collective social creative work there was no managerial need in them for creation of real socialism and communism[301]. However the emotional and excited atmosphere of the Congresses facilitated idol making and thus supported the crowd-“elitism” based on misunderstanding of the events and prospects by both the Congress delegates and other Party members. This provoked passivity, unconcern, and irresponsibility. Such a party cannot be the ruling party to build the society of just community because through its activity it substitutes the genuine democracy with formal democratic procedures.
Lev Bronstein (Trotsky) and others declaim their adherence to the ideals of socialism and communism and blame Stalin for destroying the intra-Party democracy and that of the Soviet government and replacing it with the power of red tape machinery, which supposedly prevented the ideals of socialism from coming to life. But their pathos about it may sound convincing only to those who either do not know Marxism or, knowing it, do not see the incompatibility of its conceptions and categories with real life. This incompatibility does not allow us to discover and solve social problems with the help of Marxist philosophy (which is also due to the incorrectly formulated «key question of philosophy» and to the defective wording of the dialectic laws[302]). The real business accounting has nothing to do with political economy and, thus, the national economy cannot be based on it[303]. Consequently, Marxist philosophy and political economy can only serve as a cover for a mafia tyranny, which will present itself as a model of formal democracy to its people but will never become a scientific and theoretical basis for real democracy, socialism and communism as the society of just community of free people. Therefore it is completely out of place to blame Stalin for «perverting» Marxism because Marxism itself is a fruit of perverted morals, intellect and psyche on the whole.