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beorgia and you continue: 'Now if there is nothing iew in the situation, why loes not the majority propose to hail the advance of the Red Army into Poland, into the Baltic countries, into Finland..." Page 20). In this decisive part of your speech you stablish that something is "new in the situation" between 1920 and 1939. Of course! This newness in the rituation is the bankruptcy of the Third International, 'he degeneracy of the Soviet State, the development of the Left Opposition, and the creation of the Fourth International. This "con* creteness of events" occured precisely between 1920 and 1939. And these events Explain sufficiently why we have radically changed our position toward the politics of the Kremlin, including its military politics.

It seems that you forget somewhat that in 1920 we supported not only the deeds of the Red Army but also the deeds of the GPU. From the point of view of our appreciation of the state there is no principled difference between the Red Army and the GPU.

In their activities they are not only closely connected but intermeshed. We can say that in 1918 and the following years we hailed the Cheka in their fight against the Russian counter-revolutionaries and imperialist spies but in 1927 when the GPU began to arrest, to exile and to shoot the genuine Bolsheviks we changed our appreciation of this institution ...

"We began to change this position in 1923. We proceeded by stages more or less in accordance with the objective developments. The decisive point of development was for us 19334." (In Defence of Marxism, pp;38-9).

In the quoted. passage, Trotsky is coming to grips with the fact that Russia is no longer, as it once was, a revolutionary workers' state.

The emergence of the Stalinist bureaucracy had brought the defeat of the German working class in 1933-yet there had been no reaction whatever inside the Stalinised Comintern. And the liné of the Kremlin leaders continued to reflect their opportunist relations with imperialism, regardless of the consequences for the working class.

On a world scąle, theretore, the workers' state that had emerged from the 1917 revolution had been transformed from a revolutionary workers state struggling to advance workers' struggles, to a counter-revolutionary workers' state, in which a bureaucratio dictatorship cynically exploited and repressed the strength of the masses to preserve its own power and privileges.

But Trotsky goes on to deal with those people who drew from this the conclusion that it is no longer necessary to defend the USSR against imperialism.

He argues for defence of the Soviet Union on the basis of defending the gains of the '1917 revolution-in the material form of the nationalised property " relations.

It'is the understanding of the specific phenomenon of a counter-revolutionary bureaucracy based on a degenerated workers state that leads to Trotsky's understanding of the social transformation in eastern. Poland in a way that offers a key to analysing postwar overturns.

How could the bureaucracy be counter-revolutionary yet at the same time carry. out a progressive transformation?

"The statification of the means of production is, as we said, a progressive measure. But its progressiveness is relative; its specific weight depends on the sum total of all the other factors. Thus we must first and foremost establish that the extensions of the territory dòminated by bureaucratic autocracy and parasitism. cloaked by "socialist' measures, can augment the prestige of the Kremlin, engender illusions concerning the possibility of replacing the proletarian revolution by bureaucratic manbeuvres and so on. This evil by far outweighs the progressive content of Stalinist reforms in Poland." (In Defence of Marxism, Of course this does not mean that Trotsky provides us with an analysis of the post-war overturns: rather he offers us the Marxist method of approach. that provides the tool with which to open up the complexities of the overturns.

Bloomfield on the other hand is able to offer us only descriptions, not a political explanation of the actions of the Soviet bureaucracy. The actions of the Czech CP are described-but no alternative courses of action are examined.

As a result he offers us only a series of dilemmas. For if the Czech CP was not aiming for revolution or for socialism, then what kind of party and programme were needed: what is needed today? And what kind of state is Czechoslovakia today?

Yet his research offers the reader a chance to formulate answers to these ques### TONY 'olution 15), and relation tions that reinforce the Trotskyist analysis of the post-war overturns.

Tim Wohlforth says in 'Communists' Against Revolution (p.20) "It was international considerations which determined the final social evolution of the countries in this [E. Europe buffer] region."

This is essential to understand because the form of the process of transformation was different in a lot of ways in each buffer country. In the case of Czechoslovakia, the masses were very much involved: but in the case of Hungary there was the direct use of the Russian Army.

Despite these apparent divergences, the transformations themselves were politically the same. They took place in the same period because of the same international factors.

At the end of the war the Soviet bureaucracy came together to horse-trade with the capitalist world which countries would come under which "sphere of influence"

Czechoslovakia was ceded to the Russian sphere of influence, even though American troops were in a position to invade (helped by the Germans, who had held out against the Russians but once they realised they were being defeated made things easy for the 'allies').

From the imperialists' point of view this territory was ceded to Russian influence only because they needed the help of the Soviet bureaucracy to stop revolutions in the industrialised West.

Trotsky's expectations of the possibilities that would arise from the war were shown to be correct. the CPs.

The bourgeoisie's were in the main exposed for their co-existence with and often outright support for the fascists.

There were mutinies in the US Army-as. troops demanded to be sent home. And a huge wave of strikes erupted in the USA itself.

So there was a genuine basis for socialist revolutions. And it was here that the most important counterrevolutionary role of the Russian bureaucracy was revealed.

Stalin directed the most powerful CPs to give in their arms and to take ministerial positions in bourgeois coalition governments: This they did from 194547. These years of collaboration were used by the bourgeoisie to , provide an essential breathing space for capitalism which ensured its survival. In Indochina and in Greece' the ' Stalinists actually welcomed the arrival of imperialist occupying armies! Anything subsequently done in Eastern Europe. is far outweighed by these counterrevolutionary actions.

In the Eastern European "buffer" states encircling its borders the Soviet Union set up coalition regimes which included bourgeois parties.

Stalin did not go for transformation of the economies. He aimed only to provide the Stalinist bureaucracy with a buffer and breathing space to rebuild.

So what exactly were the butter states of Eastern Europe in those two years 1945-734 They: remained capitalist states: but capitalist states in which the state machinery rested on the strength of the Soviet Red Army or (in Yugoslavia) on Communist-led partisan forces. As such they remained unstable formations, in which a process of change was already underway.

There is little evidence to suggest that in these initial moves the Stalinist bureaucracy did anything but move forward empirically step-by-step: there seems no sign of any overall long-term strategy of assimilating these states, as claimed for instance by the SWP's Chris Harman. Harman of, course believes that the Russian state' is a capitalist state: but he also feels that there was a grand plan at work from 1945:

"At the same time they (the CPs) were preparing the ground in co-operation with the Russian occupying forces, to destroy these allies (bourgeois ministers) as well-'from above'" (Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe, ileged conservative caste balanced precariously on a workers' state.

From the outset the nervous Kremlin bureaucracy insisted that the E. European Communist Parties should have the ministries of the Interior and Defence-knowing that. these would be crucial to' stop attacks on the Soviet Union from taking place from those countries.

So even while the states were still capitalist (despite extensive nationalisations, often following the expropriations of fascists' property), the Kremlin-controlled Communist Parties had key positions from which they controlled the repressive state apparatus.

the capitalists couldn't act without them, especially with the Red Army looming. Here for a period was bureaucratic control over the capitalists.

The factor that transformed this was the imperialists, who, after their breathing space, took the initiative in launching the Cold War.

ministers were chucked out of coalition governments in the West in 1947. The Marshall Aid Plan was started to regenerate capitalism in the West-and moves were made to bring the Eastern European countries into this plan.

This led the • Russian bureaucracy to act, where possible through ' the national Communist Parties, elsewhere through the Amy.

The bourgeois ministers were thrown out, the social transformations were carried through, and enlarged, purged and monolithic Stalinist » parties imposed their bureaucratic grip on new, deformed, workers states born not through revolutionary overthrow but bureaucratic/ military overturn.

So when we look at the developments in a particular country we have to assess such external factors first.

But this does not mean we dismiss the internal factors.

As Tim Wohlforth points out:

«The process of structural R assimilation was carried through in every country in Eastern Europe by the combined efforts of internal: forces and the external role of the USSR.

The relative weight external and internal forces varied from country. to country depending on the indigenous strength of the Stalinist movement in the particular country and its relative reliability in the eyes of the Kremlin."

(Wohlforth, p.29)

Continued next week