1917 AND ALL THAT: THE UNTAUGHT SYLLABUS.
In Their Own Words: A Political History Of The Cold War 1917-1983.
By Brian Mitchell.

Chapter 1

PLANS FOR A CAPITALIST 'PEACE'.
I would like to begin by telling the story of two little girls, one in Leningrad
in 1941-42, and one in Hiroshima in 1945. For it is so that stories like theirs
never have to be told again that this book is written and must be read.

Tanya Savicheva, an 11 year old Leningrad schoolgirl, kept a diary in a child's
alphabet notebook, each page had a letter of the Russian alphabet; each page
which had an initial of a member of her family had an entry:

Z - "Zhenya died at 12.00pm. Dec 28 1941."
B - "Babushka (Grandmother) died at 3pm Jan 25 1942."
L - "Lyoka died at 5am March 17 1942."
V - "Uncle Vasya died at 2am April 13 1942."
L - "Uncle Lyosha died at 4pm May 10 1942."
M - "Darling Mama died at 7.30am May 13 1942."

The last entry in Tanya Savicheva's diary reads:

"The Savichevs are dead. All dead. Only I, Tanya, am left."

Tanya managed to be evacuated from Leningrad. She died of hunger and dysentery
in 1943. Her little note book was found in a box with her mother's wedding
dress.

Sadako Sassaki survived the immediate effects of the bombing of Hiroshima only
to develop leukaemia seven years later. A Japanese legend says that a child who
has made a thousand paper cranes will live a long and happy life. With her
twisted and swollen fingers Sadako made 964 paper cranes. Friends made the other
36 for her and put them in her little coffin. Today, Japanese children make
paper cranes and bring them to the monument to the victims of Hiroshima.

The sad stories of war would fill many hundreds of thousands of very large
books. But people must be made to remember, people must be made to learn, even
if they do not want to, and the young must be told about war, for it is they, as
well as we who were born in war and abhor apathy, who must prevent war
happening; and inherit peace.

A few years after Tanya and Sadako had died, the progressive German writer and
poet Berthold Brecht said:

"People's memories for pascht sufferings are surprisingly bad. Their ability to
imagine future sufferings seems to be even worse. The descriptions of atomic
horrors apparently hardly frightens New Yorkers at all. The people of Hamburg
are still surrounded by ruins and yet they hesitate to raise their hands in
protest against a new war. The terrible events that shook the world in the
forties seem to be forgotten. There is a saying that yesterday's rain doesn't
make us wet.

This numbness is what we have to fight. Its extreme form is death. Indeed, too
many people appear to be dead. They are like people who have already lived
through what still lies ahead of them because they do nothing to stop it.

Nonetheless, nothing can convince me that the defence of reason against its
enemies is hopeless."

(Berthold Brecht, at the Vienna Peace Conference, Nov 1952.)

"Let us keep repeating what
has been said a thousand
times already,
in case it is left unsaid
once too often!
Let us keep renewing our warnings
even if they are like
ashes in our mouths!
For the wars of the past
seem like tame experiments
compared with those which
now threaten humanity,
and they will happen, beyond a doubt,
if those who are preparing them
in full public view
do not get their fingers smashed."

(Berthold Brecht.)

At the Warsaw peace congress in 1950, the famous Soviet writer and film maker
Ilya Ehrenburg said:

"The Washington Times Herald wrote: "We shall send aeroplanes that fly at 40,000
feet. We shall load them with atom, incendiary and desease-bearing bombs. We
shall slay the infants in their cradles, the old at their prayers, the workers
at their toil." I shall never say that projects of such a kind would emanate
from decent Americans... It may be replied that newspapers are produced by
irresponsible people. Very well, I shall allow myself to quote... responsible
members of the United States Congress: John Walsh, Congressman from Indiana:
"America will flood Russia with atom bombs... We have at least 250 bombs and
hundreds of ways of getting to Russia." Mr. Johnson, Senator from South
Carolina: "The USA will no longer wage war in the remote corners of the world,
but will carry it to the very heart of Communist Russia"."

(Ilya Ehrenburg, quoting US newspapers and Government officials, at the 1950
Warsaw peace congress.)

Why such vicious hatred for the Soviet Union? What fear motivates them to plan
the destruction of 270 million people, just as Hitler's fascists had planned?

Ehrenburg quoted just a few of the many statements which reveal US ruling class
feeling and desire. In order to understand the hatred and fear that fuels their
desire to obliterate the people of the USSR and drives the arms race and
determine who is responsible for it, it is necessary to analyse the
political-economic basis of the US led Cold War. To look at the issue of world
peace in any other way is at best timidly naive; and at worst thoroughly
dishonest and dangerous.

Cold War propaganda has it that the Soviet Union poses such a threat to world
peace that every country in the 'free world' must arm itself to the teeth
against it.

But in order also to understand the true nature of cold war ideology and the
reason for the existence of this ideology we must first look at its history and
its origins and analyse its esoteric language:

"The United States should plan to defeat the Soviet Union and to do so at a cost
that would not prohibit US recovery."

(Foreign Policy, New York, No.39, 1980.)

"The plan says that 'we must revitalise and enhance special-operations [nuclear
B.M.] forces to project US power where the use of conventional forces would be
premature, inappropriate or infeasible', particularly in Eastern Europe.

"Further, 'to exploit political, economic and military weaknesses within the
Warsaw Pact'.

"...It will feature electronic warfare and possibly chemical, biological and
nuclear weapons."

"As outlined in the paper, the strategy for Southwest Asia, including the
Persian Gulf, directs American forces to be ready to force their way in if
necessary, and not to wait for an invitation from a friendly government, which
has been the publicly stated policy."

(US Defense Dept. strategy for fighting a protracted nuclear war with the Soviet
Union, in New York Times May 30 1982.)

"The US is leader of the free world, and under this administration is beginning
to act like it. If the Europeans don't like it, that's too bad. It's too late to
do anything about it now."

(US Vice President George Bush, Chicago, Aug 16 1982.) (1)

Such statements planning nuclear war against the USSR began at the end of the
Second World War:

"We must create a new super State. If the Russians do not agree, an invitation
to their leaders might help if they were to watch a demonstration of atom bombs
dropped on Siberia."

(US Senator Joseph Ball, Nov 10 1945.)

"At the present time the USSR does not have the capability of inflicting similar
damage on the US industry. When the Soviets obtain a strategic air force with
bombers with a range of 5,000 miles and the Atom bomb they will be able to
retaliate and the overwhelming advantage the US now has will be nullified."

(From US Joint War Plans Committee Directive 432/D Point 5. Dec 14 1945.)

"It has been suggested that we announce that we will not use atomic weapons
except in retaliation against prior use of such weapons by an aggressor...
Unless we are prepared to abandon our objectives, we cannot make such a
declaration in good faith."

(From declassified US security document NSC Directive 68, 1950.) (2)

"Now that we have got a head start on the H-bomb we should lay down the law...
not as diplomats but as soldiers... we have got to act while we have the
advantage."

(General Howley, former US Commander in Chief, Berlin Feb 6 1950.)

"The US must take the offensive against Russia. It is a role which, in my
opinion, we cannot escape... We should first get ready to ward off any possible
attack and we should boldly proclaim our undeniable objective to be a world at
peace. To have peace we should be willing to pay, and declare our intention to
pay, any price - even the price of instituting a war to compel cooperation for
peace...

[this] peace seeking policy, though it casts us in a character new to democracy
- an initiator of a war of aggression - would earn for us a proud and popular
title - we would become the first aggressors for peace."

(US Secretary of the Navy, Mathews, Jan and Aug 1950.) (3)

Note that initiating a war of aggression is now a policy of democracy - and a
peace seeking one at that.

(1)See:Denis and Cynthia Roberts "Europe - First Continent of Lasting Peace."
Harney and Jones. London 1983.

(2)Foreign Relations of the United States: 1950, Vol.1, US Government Printing
Office, Washington 1977.

The full text of NSC 68 is published in Naval War College Review XXVII, No.6,
Sequence No.255, May/June 1950.

(3)See:Denis and Cynthia Roberts "Europe - First Continent of Lasting Peace."
Harney and Jones. London 1983.

And:"Conspiracy Against Europe. The Paris Agreements." Committee for German
Unity. Berlin 1955.

Felix Green "The Enemy: What Every American Should Know About Imperialism."
Vintage Books. Random House. NY 1971.

R. Palme Dutt "The Crisis of Britain and the British Empire." Lawrence and
Wishart. London 1953.

"Decisive results against the Soviet Union could now be obtained only by the
employment of Atom bombs delivered by long range aircraft against the industrial
heart of the USSR. Long range aircraft operating from England; Foggia, Italy;
Agra, India; Chengtung, China; and Okinawa..."

(US Joint War Plans Committee document.)

"Russia has the ordinary arms of war, and we have the atomic bombs... I imagine
that we may be rather stronger at present than we shall be in four year's
time... The threat of an atomic bomb on Baku, after giving due notice for the
evacuation of the people, would be most unpleasant; it would mean no loss of
life, but it would mean almost starvation in future years."

(Lord Brabazon, former Tory Cabinet Minister, House of Lords, Feb 28 1951.)

"If we take part in a Third World War, it will be the Soviet Union which will
have to be destroyed."

(US General Bradley, Chairman of Combined Chiefs of Staff, to Senate Committee,
May 1951.) (1)

These and other plans were conceived after the conclusion of the Potsdam treaty
at the end of the Second World War. Codenamed "Fleetwood", "Charioteer",
"Trojan" and "Dropshot", they listed targets such as Moscow, Leningrad, the
Dnieper and Don valley industrial complexes, and the Baku oil refineries. Over
300 atom bombs were to be delivered from bases in Norfolk, Turkey, Italy,
Cyprus, Peshawar and the Middle East. One plan envisaged the immediate deaths of
thirteen million Soviet people.

These plans, further details of which we shall see later, were revealed in now
declassified US military documents: Joint Intelligence Committee Reports 329 and
329/1 of November 3 1945. (2)

In 1948/49 there were US plans to atom bomb the Soviet Union after leading an
armoured column to destroy the GDR (then the Soviet Zone) by US General Clay,
Commander in Chief of the US Occupation Army in Germany:

"In General Clay's view there will be no debate about whether to use the Atom
bomb. It will be used immediately."

(From "Meet our Commander in the Atom War", in US Air University Quarterly
Review, 1948.)

In 1946 there were plans of British armed forces Chiefs of Staff Committee to
use not only nuclear, but germ weapons against the USSR by British and US forces
from bases in Norwich, Nicosia and Peshawar.

Targets were to be:

"58 cities making up 77.5% of the Soviet Union's urban population."

These plans, reported in The Times June 15 and the Morning Star June 16 1981,
were discovered by members of the Church of Scientology at the Public Records
Office in London.

(1)See:"Conspiracy Against Europe. The Paris Agreements." Committee for German
Unity. Berlin 1955.

(2)See:A.C.Brown "Dropshot: The US Plan for War With the Soviet Union in 1957."
Dial Press. NY 1978.

See also:T.Etzold and J.Gaddis "Containment: Documents on American Policy and
Strategy 1945/50." Columbia University Press. NY 1978.

Full texts of many declassified US secret nuclear war plans documents are
printed in:

A.C.Brown "Dropshot: The US Plan for War With the Soviet Union in 1957." Dial
Press. NY 1978.

And:T.Etzold and J.Gaddis "Containment: Documents on American Policy and
Strategy 1945/50." Columbia University Press. NY 1978.

Substantive extracts from the texts are printed in:

Nikolai Yakoflev "CIA Target - The USSR." Progress. Moscow 1982.

Chapter 2

PLANS FOR US 'WORLD LEADERSHIP.'.
"Whether we like it or not, we must all recognise that the victory which we have
won has placed upon the American people the continuing burden of responsibility
for world leadership. The future peace of the world will depend in large part
upon whether or not the United States shows that it is really determined to
continue its role as a leader among nations."

(From Truman's "Unification of War and Navy Departments" message to Congress,
Dec 19 1945.) (1)

The same record called for an about turn in policy and discussed the question,
first raised before the war had even ended in January 1945, of setting up a US
led anti-Soviet general federation of European countries of which Germany would
be a part. This was to be one of the forerunners of the EEC and NATO.

Just 6 months after the end of the Second World War, during his notorious "Iron
Curtain" speech at Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946,("Iron Curtain" being a term
first used by Goebbels*) Churchill called for a crusade against "the growing
challenge and peril to Christian civilisation" - the USSR - which suggested that
the British and US governments begin nuclear bombing the USSR while the Soviets
did not have the atom bomb. The "Churchill Doctrine" later became the "Truman
Doctrine."

"As I understood the Fulton speech, it was a preventive war which Mr. Churchill
had in mind."

(British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, House of Commons, March 28 1950.)

The "Dropshot" plan of 1949 was to be a "preventive" war against the Soviet
Union elaborated by Truman. The date was to be January 1 1957. (2)

But the Soviet Union tested its own nuclear device in 1949 and had its own atom
bomb with a delivery system capable of reaching the USA available by 1957.

As information from the US Brookings Institute and other Western sources show;
the US has prepared nuclear attacks against a number of European and developing
countries.

"We have discussed many times the use of the atomic bomb, tactically."

(General Omar Bradley, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressing the US
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1953.)

"If we go over to more positive action against the adversary in Korea, it will
be necessary to expand the war beyond the boundaries of Korea and to use the
atomic bomb."

(Eisenhower, March 30 1953.) (3)

*"If the German people lay down their arms the whole of Eastern and
South-Eastern Europe, together with the Reich would come under Russian
domination. Behind the iron curtain mass butcheries would begin, and all that
would remain would be a crude automation, a daily fermenting mass of thousands
of proletarians and a desparing slave animals knowing nothing of the outside
world."

(Goebbels, 1941, in "Das Reich" Feb 25 1945. (My italics B.M.)) (4)

(1)US Congressional Record Vol 91 Part 9.

(2)See:A.C.Brown "Dropshot: The US Plan for War With the Soviet Union in 1957."
Dial Press. NY 1978.

Quoted in:Prof. N.Yakoflev "CIA Target - the USSR." Progress Publishers Moscow
1982.

(3)See:R.Palme Dutt "Problems of Contemporary History." Lawrence and Wishart.
London 1963..

(4)Quoted in: Morning Star Aug 14 1984.

"There are no good strategic targets in Korea itself, but the military would
very much like to use atomic weapons in any option involving operations outside
Korea.

Their use would be most profitable from a purely military point of view."

(Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hull, May 13 1953.) (1)

"If we succeed in a simultaneous attack on all the forward airforce bases of the
Communists, the enemy will be bled white at the outset of hostilities...

It is our plan for Europe as well."

(Eisenhower, Jan 1954.) (2)

These plans and preparations, intending nuclear strikes against nations which
did not have nuclear weapons, included:

Sending B-29 bombers with nuclear bombs to "protect" the US from "communist
subversion" in Uruguay in 1947.

Nuclear attacks on Korea under Truman in 1950 and Eisenhower in 1953.

A nuclear threat to Guatemala in 1954.

Eisenhower offered the French premier Joseph Laniel MK21 tactical nuclear
weapons for use against Vietnamese forces which had surrounded French colonial
troops at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Dulles came to London to get Labour Prime
Minister Attlee's support for this. But peace movements in London and Paris
already knew about it and were already in action. Attlee had to tell Dulles that
the majority of the British people wouldn't support the leaked plan.

China was threatened with a nuclear attack in 1958.

Also in 1958 Eisenhower sent 14,000 US troops armed with Honest John tactical
nuclear weapons to Lebanon and threatened Iraq and Jordan with nuclear weapons.

There were plans for a nuclear attack on Berlin in 1959.

Kennedy threatened a nuclear attack on Laos in 1961.

In 1961 Kennedy also threatened the GDR with a nuclear attack.

NATO forces also planned a nuclear attack on the GDR in 1961. We shall return to
this dangerous incident, which brought Europe to the brink of war, in discussing
NATO and CIA links with dissident activities and counter-revolution in Eastern
European countries, in a later chapter.

The world was again brought to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 when Kennedy
threatened the Soviet Union with a nuclear attack during the Cuban missile
crisis.

In 1968 Joint Chiefs of Staff under Westmorland recommended President Johnson
use nuclear weapons to relieve US troops under siege at Khe Sahn in Vietnam.

President Nixon made several threats of nuclear attacks to the Vietnamese
Government between 1969 and 1972.

During the Yom Kippur Arab-Izraeli war in 1973, US bases throughout the world,
on recommendation of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Chief of White House
Staff Alexander Haig, were ordered to prepare for full readiness for nuclear
warfare with the USSR.

And a nuclear raid was planned against Iran in 1980. Because of the Iran US
hostages, the US Supreme Command planned to use 19 nuclear bombs delivered by
B-52 bombers under the pretext of an imminent "Russian invasion" of Iran.(3)

(1)Quoted in: Morning Star Aug 14 1984.

(2)Quoted from Izvestia in: Morning Star Aug 14 1984.

(3)See:"The Deadly Connection: Nuclear War and US Intervention" American Friends
Service Committee, Cambridge Massachussets, 1983.

Also:Ben Lowe "The NATO Hot Potato" Zed Press London. [Forthcoming]

And:Barry Blechman and Stephen Kaplan "Force Without War" Brookings Institute,
Washington 1978.

And:Prof Nikolai Yakoflev "CIA's Secret War." Novosti. Moscow 1983.

And:John Evans, Megan Martin and John Smith "From War in the Third World to the
Third World War: The Peace Movement and Latin America." Nicaragua and El
Salvador Solidarity Campaigns. London 1984.

"The notion common to nearly all Americans, that 'no nuclear weapons have been
used since Nagasaki' is mistaken... Again and again, generally in secret from
the American public, US nuclear weapons have been used... in the precise way
that a gun is used when you point it at someone's head in a confrontation,
whether or not the trigger is pulled."

(Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) in, "Nuclear Armaments: An Interview With
Daniel Ellsberg." (1)

Note that all these incidents are traceable to the world wide struggle for power
between the working class and the capitalist class. This book is about that
struggle, and can leave no honest person in any doubt about its existence and
veracity, and capital's desire to crush working class power and socialism by
all means possible. And the overwhelming evidence presented here shows that a
nuclear war is not by any means out of their thinking.

Roughly one quarter of the world has now been withdrawn from capitalist
exploitation and control, and is in the hands of the working people in the world
Socialist community. Halting the spread of, and "rolling back socialism" is what
the nuclear arms race is all about.

(1)See:John Evans, Megan Martin and John Smith "From War in the Third World to
the Third World War: The Peace Movement and Latin America." Nicaragua and El
Salvador Solidarity Campaigns. London 1984.



Chapter 3

WHEN DID THE COLD WAR BEGIN?
The Cold War started not in the immediate post-war period; not in the 1950s or
60s; nor in the 1980s. No. The Cold War started as soon as there was somebody to
have a cold war about. The Cold War started in 1917 immediately after the
Russian Revolution, when the Russian workers said:

"FROM THE WAR-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE OF THE OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET

OF WORKERS AND SOLDIERS DEPUTIES

========================================================

To the Citizens of Russia:

The Provisional Government is deposed. The State

power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd

Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies,

the Military Revolutionary Committee, which

stands at the head of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison.

The aims for which the people were fighting -

immediate proposal of a democratic peace,

abolition of landlord property rights in the land,

labour control over production, creation of a Soviet Government,

- these aims have been achieved.

LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION OF WORKERS, SOLDIERS AND PEASANTS!

Military-Revolutionary Committee

of the Petrograd Soviet of

Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.

November 7, 1917."

(Declaration of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers, Nov 7 1917.)

The Cold War didn't come from the politically conscious working class, who
greeted the revolution with enthusiastic support:

"When the news of the Russian Revolution on November 7, 1917, came through... I
had been victimised from big factories and shipyards... I had read a little of
Marx, but never anything of Lenin. I had never heard of Stalin, but I feel now
what I felt then. "The workers have done it at last". It wouldn't have
mattered... to me where this revolution had taken place... All I knew was the
workers had conquered, were the top dogs somewhere in the world. That was enough
for me. These were the lads and lasses I must support through thick and thin...
for me these same people could never do, nor ever can do, any wrong against the
working class...

...whatever the policy of the Soviet Union it is always in the interests of its
people and the working people of every other country in the world."

(British Communist leader Harry Pollitt.) (1)

(1)Harry Pollitt "Looking Ahead." The Communist Party of Great Britain. London
1947.

No. The Cold War didn't come from the working class. It came from the
capitalists, whos newspapers screamed:

"The remedy for Bolshevism is bullets."

"Bolshevism should have been strangled at birth."

"Bolsheviks eat babies."

"Of all the tyrannies in history the Bolshevik tyranny is the worst, the most
destructive, the most degrading."

"Like the vampire which sucks the blood from its victims."

Governments and media who perpetuate the Cold War allege that we have a common
enemy. This enemy, they say, is "evil", "oppressive", "aggressive",
"imperialistic", "dictatorial", and "totalitarian". But who is this enemy? And
how did they come to be an "enemy"?

This enemy, they tell us, is "Russia". Not the imperial Russia of the Tsars; but
the socialist Soviet Russia - the USSR.

They came to be an "evil", "oppressive", "aggressive", "imperialistic",
"dictatorial", and "totalitarian" enemy not during the Tsar's time, but only
since the Russian Revolution of 1917 when the Tsarist regime was overthrown and
the Soviets (Councils of workers) took power. This is how they came to be an
enemy. And according to our government and media, so is every other nation which
has taken the non-capitalist road to the social and economic development and
progress of its people.

But there was a period when this 'enemy' was a friend and ally. This was during
the Second World War, when another capitalist power, which was not regarded by
the British Government and its media as evil, oppressive, aggressive,
imperialistic, dictatorial, and totalitarian, embarked on a plan to enslave not
only Czech-Sudetenland, but Poland, Austria, Holland, Belgium, France, the rest
of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Baltic and Balkan states, the USSR, the Middle,
Near, and Far East, S.E. Asia, Africa, and finally Britain and America as well.

But as soon as the German Fascists were defeated (mostly by the Red Army, as
this book will show), Winston Churchill's "our Soviet ally" immediately became
our evil, oppressive, aggressive, imperialistic, dictatorial, and totalitarian
enemy again.

How does a world power of of some 270 million people become "friend - enemy -
friend - enemy" in the timespan of only thirty years - especially when the
government and social-economic system of that country has only changed once in
that time?

Surely a friend is a friend until he attacks you - only then does he become an
enemy? The USSR has never attacked us. Nor is there a shred of evidence that it
ever intends to or has ever intended to. Russia or the USSR has invariably been
our ally in every European war.

Surely your best friend is one who becomes your ally when another attacks you?

Now, Germany is a friend and the USSR is an 'enemy'. Isn't that rather strange?
Isn't that rather confusing - to say nothing of hypocritical and disloyal?

Why the confusion? Why the hypocrisy? Why the shameful disloyalty to a friend
and ally? Why the conspiracy of lies, tricks and silence against that country?

To find this we must bring to the surface some long forgotten and buried aspects
of the history of that country and of our relations with it. In order to have
any understanding of this we must discover how that country operates, its
values, its aims and its goals.



Chapter 4

A LAND WITHOUT CAPITALISTS.
"The thing that mattered to me was that lads like me had whacked the bosses and
the landlords, had taken their factories, their lands and their banks. I had
never heard of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat or the expression Soviet
Power... I wasn't concerned as to whether or not the Russian Revolution had
caused bloodshed, been violent, and all the rest of it. I had lived my life in
Lancashire. I had read and seen what the kind-hearted British bosses had done to
the Lancashire working class. I knew about Peterloo. I had seen too often on the
promenade at Blackpool, when on holiday in our Sunday best, what a stunted
deformed bunch we were. I hated everything that the violence of the British
Industrial Revolution had done to my class and my people...

...for it is only the Soviet Union and its people who can say that the whole of
the means of production, distribution and exchange are in their hands. It is
only in the Soviet Union that there can be a complete planning in which each
aspect of the economy of the nation fits one into the other; only there where
there is no competition for markets, no class against class, no race against
race, and a political and moral unity which amazed the world during the war and
thwarted the hopes of reactionaries...

This is what gives rise to such deadly hatred in the minds of the capitalist
class and their Social Democratic allies."

(British Communist leader Harry Pollitt.) (1)

(1)Harry Pollitt "Looking Ahead." The Communist Party of Great Britain. London
1947.

Since the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the failure of Churchill's attempts to
"strangle socialism at birth", the West has tried to use every means at its
disposal to crush existing Socialism wherever it exists, and to vilify it in the
minds of working people everywhere. As this book will show, all have been
interlocked and linked with each other - through Tsarist "White" armies,
counter-revolutionaries, Ultra-Leftists (Trotskyists), spies such as Sidney
Reilly and Bruce Lockhart, industrial sabotage by British specialists hired by
Soviet industry, the CIA working through Soviet 'dissident' groups and emigre
organisations, economic and political destabilisation, and chemical, biological,
and psychological warfare, and ultimately, on two occasions - full scale
invasion. And as the general decline and crisis of capital deepens and the world
Socialist community progresses, they are becoming ever more desperate and
dangerous.

Except for primitive communism, societies have always consisted of economic
classes: the one owning the means of production of wealth, the other, owning no
means of production themselves and are therefore entirely dependent on making
more profit for the owners of capital in order to live, producing that wealth:
owner and slave, patrician and plebian, feudal landowner and serf, guildmaster
and journeyman, and capitalist or bourgeoisie (French: capital owning class) and
proletarian (working class by hand or brain). In short: exploiter and exploited.

Throughout this book I shall be referring to the "working class" or "working
people". I do not want to be misunderstood as to mean by "working people" or the
"working class" only those who do manual labour. By working class or working
people I mean all those who are not capitalists - who use the private ownership
of bank or finance capital, or industrial capital, land, or the means of
production (factories, machines, or other facilities) in order to extract
private profit from the economic exploitation of the working class: whether
those workers use their hands or their brains; and whether they are at home or
in imperialist 'client' nations.

We now have capitalists: they own the land and its raw materials, the banks, the
means of production, the products produced by these means of production, and the
profits made in that productive process: and we have wage earning people:
workers - by hand or by brain, who own nothing but their power to labour - by
hand or by brain in order to produce the surplus value which the capitalist
appropriates as his profit, and who are completely dependent upon the will of
the capitalist - his production for private profit and not for human need - for
their entire means of subsistence, whether they are cooks, bottle washers,
factory workers, teachers, computer operators, salesmen, secretaries, bus
drivers, business executives or high court judges.

In Britain it was calculated in the late 1970s that the ratio of ownership of
wealth between rich and poor, roughly between capitalist and worker, was such
that 7 per cent of the British people owned 84 per cent of the country's wealth.
The majority of the British people, the other 93 per cent, owned between them
the remaining 16 per cent of the country's wealth.

It is not my place to elaborate here on the fundamentals of political economy.
But suffice it to say that, like Darwin's theory proves evolution, Newton's
theory proves gravity, and Einstein's theory proves relativity, so Marx's
equally scientific labour theory of value proves that only labour, and not
capital, creates wealth; but the majority of that wealth is always appropriated
by the owner of capital as private profit.

Indeed, capitalism could not have developed until the accumulation of two
important political economic necessities for its development was in a well
advanced and polarised form. This already highly polarised form was in the
existence of the accumulation of wealth as private capital; and men who were
"free" from serfdom and at the same time "free" from the means of production -
land, raw materials, machinery; i.e: "free" from any other means of getting a
living for themselves except to sell their labour power for wages, or starve.

"This primitive accumulation plays in political economy about the same part as
original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, thereupon sin fell on the human
race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of
the past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the
diligent, the intelligent, and above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals,
spending their subsistence, and more, in riotous living. The legend of
theological sin tells us certainly how man came to eat his bread in the sweat of
his brow, but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are
people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass
that the former sort accumulated wealth and the latter sort had at last nothing
to sell but their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the
great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but
itself; and the wealth of the few that increases constantly -- although they
have long ceased to work. Such widespread childishness is every day preached to
us in defence of property."

(Karl Marx.)

Thus, the justification of capitalism is explained by theology rather than by
mathematics or any explanation of the scientific laws of political economy and
economic development.

The feudal system broke down economically and socially, and the whole
socio-economic system then became more and more subordinated to the rise in the
political power of capital and the corresponding comparative impoverishment of
the workers, and the rise in the wealth they produced for the new class of
capitalists; since the more the worker produces for private capital, the less he
owns himself by comparison. It is the workers themselves which actually produce
the wealth which becomes the political power of capital over labour; instead of
owning that power themselves, as in socialism. The working class do not want to
be ruled over by capital. People should control capital; not the other way
round.

Just briefly here, a couple of simple experiments disprove all bourgeois
(capitalist) political economic theories that their whole economic philosophy is
based on. (Which, incidentally, is why they are always in a total contradictory
muddle.):

If, as capitalist political economists say, that capital produces wealth, by
investing it in the means of production - factories, machinery, fuel, raw
materials, and wages, and adding a percentage as profit; then the question to
ask is: where does the worker - the purchaser - get this extra percentage which
the capitalist says is his profit; seeing as the worker's wages is what the
capitalist pays him? Is the worker printing extra money somewhere to make that
extra percentage that is profit - remembering that the worker's only source of
income is his wages from the capitalist?

And if, as capitalist ideology says, that under capitalism, equal opportunities
lead to universal prosperity for all; then another simple experiment proves that
this could never be. Everybody cannot be capitalists. Capitalism, by its very
nature, because of its inherent laws, because of what it is, because it is
capitalism, can only survive as the exploitation of the majority by a minority.
The simple experiment that points out the impossibility of capitalism being
otherwise is simply to print and donate to the world's population a million
dollars each, which they could then 'invest' and live off the interest and
profits, and no one need go to work!

No. A capitalist creates wealth no more than a person who milks a cow creates
milk.

As Marx proved, only labour produces the values of the wealth of society that is
embodied in the sum of that society's commodities. But the worker doesn't
receive the value of his labour - the value of the commodity he creates. This is
appropriated by the capitalist.

Under socialism there are no longer classes with conflicting economic interests.
One class produces - by hand or by brain - what it owns, and owns what it
produces.



Chapter 5

WHICH CLASS WANTS WAR?
"It seems to me that the most important thing that is usually overlooked in the
question of the war, a key issue to which insufficient attention is paid and
over which there is so much dispute - useless, hopeless, idle dispute, I should
say - is the question of the class character of the war: what caused that war,
what classes are waging it, and what historical and historico-economic
conditions gave rise to it."

(Lenin.)

Fascism, imperialism, and wars are not the product of the working class.

Fascism emerges in capitalist countries during the general crisis of capital and
expresses the interests of the most reactionary forces of capital.

Imperialism is the economic plunder and therefore the political, social, and
economic enslavement of the 'underdeveloped' countries and of the world's
working class by the imperialist countries through the domination of their
trans-national finance capital.

The imperial domination of finance capital throws up also the contradictions of
capitalism, such as the phenomenum of the Third World 'debt' to the imperialist
countries. If an imperialist country takes a certain quantity of raw materials
out of a country for a certain price. And if it convert those raw materials into
finished products, which it sells back to that country at a profit; it is
obvious that that country has not got the extra amount of foreign currency from
its sale of the raw materials to be able to pay for the finished products. So
the imperialists 'loan' that country so that it will be able to buy. If this
continues it is quite obvious that that country is always going to be in ever
increasing 'debt' to the imperialist world.

This is only one brief and oversimplified example of the nature of imperialist
exploitation and of a cause of the Third World Debt. The Third World Debt will
be dealt with more explicitly in a later chapter.

Wars till now have been the result of imperialist nations' competition and
capitalism's continual need for more territory, cheap raw materials and labour,
and markets to exploit. Now wars are more likely the result of the capitalist
world's attempts to destroy existing socialism and to prevent its natural spread
throughout the world.

This is a manifestation of an immutable and natural law inherent in capitalism
and cannot be avoided if capitalism is to continue to exist; and no will or
actions of man can reconcile these irreconcilable contradictions of the process
of capital.

Alleged Soviet 'imperialism' is utterly false, and any notion of it or reference
to it has no place in the peace movement. The Soviet Union is a socialist
country and a founder member of CMEA (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance;
called 'Comecon' by the West). The Soviet Union trades on equal terms and does
not exploit the labour or material resources of anybody. In fact, as has been
the case with developing socialist countries like Vietnam and Cuba, the Soviet
Union has frequently traded at a loss with countries, often making enormous
gifts and waiving debts.

Socialist countries do not have colonies to exploit, do not have multi-national
companies, own no factories, mines or oilfields in other lands, and do not
exploit a single worker anywhere in the world.

The socialist countries trade equally on the basis of the Marxist labour theory
of value: equal labour power for equal labour power. And this is measurable in
very definite terms. Socialist countries are therefore incapable of exploitation
or imperialism.

Also, the peace movement must understand that, unlike capitalist countries,
Socialist countries do not want war. Socialist economies have no interest in
war. Soviet people do not want war. This cannot be repeated enough. And in this
book it will be repeated again; until people understand it and believe it. But
it is different in the West; where in some cases not too few people subscribe to
the dangerous notion that "we must destroy them before they destroy us". And
sadly, I have heard such remarks coming from ordinary British working people -
like ventriloquist's dummies, parroting the words of their capitalist masters
without one single moment of original thought.

Socialism and Communism, will prove to be humanity's future, not by armed force
but by its economic, social, political, and moral superiority.

Fascism, imperialism and wars are the product of capital in crisis. Land owning,
finance, and large industrial capital will always tend towards fascism and
suppress and destroy, not only its alleged freedom and democracy that it
continually screams from the rooftops, but socialism and the power of the
working class. This, as we shall see, was the case with Hitler and Mussolini.
And it has been the same with every other despotic regime all over the world.
When domestic finance capital reaches its own national limits within its own
country it seeks more territory to expand into and becomes what is known as
imperialism. Inter-imperialist wars are the result of finance capitals of
different imperialist nations competing for cheap labour, raw materials and
foreign markets and territories.

The working class do not want war.

A World War One cemetery bears the inscription: "When you go home, Tell them of
us and say: For your tomorrow, We gave our today."

Millions of workers died in World Wars 1 and II. Little did they know they were
slaughtering each other not for their fellow citizens' tomorrow, but for the
division of the world among their capitalist masters. They thought they were
fighting for "freedom".

Armies on both sides were told that God was on their side.

What messages would those young voices have for us today? Was 20 years of
capitalist 'peace' - the unemployment and squalor of the 1920s and 30s - worth
all those young lives? Would a whole generation of Europe's best working men
ever forgive us for breaking our faith with the dead 20 years later? How
willingly they went for "King and Country"; some even lied about their age; only
to be thrown into the carnage by red faced old generals; only to be ordered
"over the top" by petulant faced young public schoolboy officers who threatened
to shoot them if they held back. Could they ever fool working men to do it
again? Twenty years after working men of Europe slaughtered each other so that
their capitalist rulers could divide up slices of continents among themselves;
finance capital launched another war; this time against the bastion of working
class power - the Soviet Union. But you cannot bury historical truth in trenches
with a hidden inscription saying: "Here lies truth, it died for the continuation
of lies and hypocrisy."

"The British, the French and the German workmen have no quarrel one with
another. If they can make their will prevail, in the councels of Europe, there
will be no war, and there will be an enormous reduction of armaments. The
interest of workers everywhere is international peace."

(The Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Hicks, in an address to TUC delegates in Manchester
Cathedral, Sept 1913.)

The people of Europe did not make their will prevail. They allowed themselves to
be divided by the Right Wing. And the imperialists were able to start the First
World War unhindered.

"The workers of Europe and America should realise that when they work in war
industries that are manufacturing rifles, machine guns and guns to be used
against themselves. The capitalists will not themselves go and fight if they
make up their minds to start war on the Soviet Union - they will send their
workers and peasants to the fields of death, to fight the workers and peasants
who have abolished capitalism in their own country. Every capitalist war means
suicide for the working class."

(Maxim Gorky, 1931.)

In World War Two were fighting the sons of workers who were killed in World War
One; war orphans against war orphans.

No. Working people do not want war.

However, working people, including the so-called middle classes, can
unfortunately be whipped up into jingoism and ignorant prejudice by the mass
media, it is true. But war is not at all in their interest.

"It would be insanity for the Governments not to realise that the very idea of
the monstrousity of a world war would inevitably call forth the indignation and
the revolt of the working class. The proletariat considers it a crime to fire at
each other for the profits of the capitalists, the ambitions of dynasties, or
the greater glory of secret diplomatic treaties."

(Resolution passed at the International Conference of Worker's and Socialist
Parties at Basle, 1912.)

World War One was a struggle between the older imperialist powers of Britain and
France and the newer imperialist powers of Germany and Japan. British, French
and US imperial powers feared the collapse of the Russian army, which would
release millions of German troops from the Eastern front to fight the Western
allies, and the prospect that Russia's unlimited wealth would fall to German
imperialism. The Russian revolution was also imminent. This would be equally
disastrous for the imperialists, since Russia's wealth would then fall into the
hands of the Russian people, and this might be an example to others.



Chapter 6

AN END TO WAR.
"The objective inevitability of capitalism which grew into imperialism brought
about the imperialist war. The war has brought mankind to the brink of a
precipice, to the brink of destruction of civilisation, of the brutalisation of
more millions, countless millions, of human beings...

But we are not out to rebuild the world. We are out to put an end to the
imperialist war into which hundreds of millions of people have been drawn and in
which the interests of billions and billions of capital are involved, a war
which cannot end in a truly democratic peace without the greatest proletarian
revolution in the history of mankind."

(Lenin, 1917.)

The Russians realised that to carry out their own revolution would cost less
sacrifice and loss of life than to carry out the wars of their capitalist
rulers. They put an end to the continuing slaughter of workers by workers by
putting an end to the economic system that made wars possible:

"The soldier says, "Show me what I am fighting for. Is it Constantinople, or is
it free Russia? Is it the democracy, or is it the capitalist plunderers? If you
can prove to me that I am defending the Revolution then I'll go out and fight
without capital punishment to force me."

When the land belongs to the peasants, and the factories to the workers, and the
power to the Soviets, then we'll know we have something to fight for, and we'll
fight for it."

(Russian soldier, 1917, in John Reed's "Ten Days That Shook the World." An
American journalist's account of the Russian Revolution.)

Here, it is essential to have an understanding of the true nature of the Russian
Revolution. The majority of Western books deliberately falsify, distort,
vulgarise or vilify the Russian Revolution and the Tsarist counter-revolution.
The only objective Western popular account is "Ten Days That Shook the World" by
the American journalist John Reed, who was there at the front of the revolution
at the time. Also the only Western popular account worth reading of the
counter-revolutionary plots by Tsarist "White" armies, Trotskyists, invading
foreign interventionists, British spies, and industrial sabotage by British
specialists, is "The Great Conspiracy Against Soviet Russia" by American authors
M.Sayers and A,Kahn. And P. & Z.Coates's superbly researched and documented, and
well readable "A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations" gives a good account of
British involvement in counter-revolution, sabotage, and trade and diplomatic
blockades and intrigues and disruptions against the USSR.

Contrary to the screaming headlines of the capitalist press about the 'bloody
and violent act of tyrants', the Russian Revolution was comparatively
un-violent.

"... counter-revolution, foreign invasion and blockade... turned a relatively
bloodless change of regime into a tumultuous, sanguinary civil war."

(Robert Rosenstone "Biography of John Reed.")

Even British spy Bruce Lockhart admitted that:

"For the first eight months of its existence the Soviet Government was, in fact,
a coalition."

(Bruce Lockhart "Memories of a British Agent.")

It was the counter-revolutionary wars supported by the capitalist world and
their intervention wars that were violent and bloody.

On November 7 1917 Russian workers, peasants and soldiers called: "enough of the
imperialist war!" and under the slogan "All power to the Soviets", took control
of their own affairs, thus creating the world's first socialist state.

Here, it is important to know what a Soviet is. Not many people who use the word
do.

In Russian the word 'soviet' simply means 'council'. But the word 'Soviet', with
a capital 'S', within the context of: USSR or Soviet Union, or Soviet power,
Soviet democracy etc; means something more definite and specific. In 1917 a
Soviet, whether it was the locally based, factory based, collective or farm
based, army unit based, or regional or Supreme Soviet, meant: "Council of
Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies", to which people elected such
deputies to represent them up through all levels including the Supreme Soviet.
Since 1917, and workers, soldiers and peasants are no longer seen as separate
social groups with separate socio-economic interests, indeed, peasants have more
or less disappeared, the definition has changed through: Council of Workers'
Deputies, and now simply means: Council of Peoples' Deputies.

Russia's wealth had indeed fallen into the hands of the Russian people.

This was a terrific blow to the capitalist powers. The Soviet people had dared
to take one sixth of the earth's surface and all its valuable riches and
minerals away from the capitalists for themselves.

The first act of the first All Russia Soviet conference in May 1917 was an
appeal to the working classes of the world over the heads of their governments
to lay down their arms and make peace with each other.

The very first act of the new Soviet Government was Lenin's Decree on Peace and
the policy of Peaceful Coexistence.

There is no other way that socialism can exist.

"The Government of Russia proposes for all working peoples immediately to
conclude such a peace. It expresses its readiness at once and without the
slightest delay to take the necessary steps towards the final confirmation of
the terms of such a peace by the plenipotentiary conventions of the
representatives of all countries and nations."

(From the Declaration of the Second Congress of Soviets, agreed by all sections
of the Bolshevik party.)

Here, another word needs a short explanation; since again, few people in the
West understand its proper meaning. This is the word 'Bolshevik'. The Russian
Social Democratic Labour Party, at its Second Congress in 1903, split into two
factions. These were the Bolsheviks, meaning 'majority' (from the Russian word
'bolshii' meaning 'major', hence Bolshoi Ballet etc.) and the Mensheviks:
'minority'. The Bolsheviks comprised of the communists, and the Mensheviks
comprised of an assorted mixture of ultra-leftists, (now Trotskyists) Right Wing
Labour and bourgeois socialists and social democrats who directly or in effect
supported the capitalist propertied classes. By 'propertied classes' here it is
important to know that what is meant is not those who own their own homes, which
is not prohibited in the USSR, or small land-owning peasants, or small
businesses, which are also not prohibited in the USSR; but those who own
property as capital - factories, offices, oilfields, mines, railways, shipping,
banks, finance and land in order to exploit their fellow man.

In 1917 the Bolsheviks had a majority in the Soviets (Councils).

The Decree on Peace was very first act of the new Soviet Government, early in
the morning after the very night it took power:

DECREE ON PEACE

ACCEPTED UNANIMOUSLY AT THE SESSION OF THE

ALL - RUSSIAN CONGRESS OF

SOVIETS OF WORKERS SOLDIERS AND PEASANTS DEPUTIES

26 OCTOBER 1917.

(Nov 8 modern calender)

"The Workers' and Peasants' Government created by the Revolution of 24-25
October (Nov 6-7) and supported by the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and
Peasants' Deputies, proposes to all combatant peoples and their governments to
begin immediate negotiations for a just and democratic peace.

... an immediate peace without annexations... seizure of foreign land... without
reparations.

To continue this war in order to determine how to divide the weak annexed
nationalities between the powerful and rich nations, the Government considers
the greatest crime against humanity...

The Government abolishes secret diplomacy,... conduct all negotiations quite
openly before the whole people, proceeding forthwith to the publication in full
of the secret treaties... concluded by the Government of landlords and
capitalists... All the contents of these secret treaties ...are hereby
unconditionally and completely annulled by the Government. ...government of
Russia addresses itself in particular to the class conscious workers ...England,
France and Germany... as an example for the workers of the whole world ...that
the workers of the above named countries understand the tasks now encumbent upon
them to free mankind from the horrors of war and its consequences..."

(From the Decree on Peace; the first act of the new Soviet Government, Nov 8
1917.)

The Times was forced to publish the Decree on Peace on November 10 1917. And the
Telegraph had to admit that:

"Another very strong point in the Bolshevik case is the demand for immediate
peace."

(Daily Telegraph Nov 8 1917.)



Chapter 7

AGAINST PEACE.
The Soviet proposals of a negotiated peace without annexations were completely
rejected by the Entente governments of Britain, France, the US and Italy etc.
Most did not even bother to reply. And obviously, the Soviets couldn't pull out
of the war unilaterally; which would have meant surrender of Russia and
surrender of the revolution. Therefore the Soviets negotiated a separate peace
with Germany. This was the notorious Brest-Litovsk treaty of December 22 1917;
under whose harsh terms demanded by Germany was the annexation to Germany of the
Russian territories of what is now part of Poland, and the Russian territories
of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia and the Ukraine; all were ceded to
Germany under the terms of this treaty. The Russian territories of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania remained isolated until the beginning of the Second World
War when they elected to rejoin the USSR as constituent republics. Byelorussia
and the Ukraine also later rejoined the USSR.

The Russian workers thought it better to make a separate peace with the Germans
than continue to drag on a war for objectives hidden in their capitalist rulers'
secret treaties.

The capitalist Allied governments then tried to spread rumours among the
European working classes that the Soviets were agents of Germany and had
betrayed the working class of Europe by pulling out of the war. But the Russian
workers showed their solidarity with the workers of other countries by not
allying themselves with any warring faction. Also they could not build the basis
of socialism if they were being continually drained by a foreign war. The action
of the Soviets was not to make peace with the German government but with the
German people, who responded to the Russian workers' appeal with the great
strike of German workers in January 1918.

It was only when the 'democratic' capitalist governments, who kept their motives
hidden from their own working classes, rejected the Soviet proposals for an
immediate and general peace that the Soviet Government reluctantly agreed to the
crushing terms of the Brest-Litovsk treaty imposed by Germany.

Just as in the case of the Second World War, after the Russian Revolution, the
Allied governments showed that their fear of the working class taking power was
far greater than their fear of German imperialism.

A group of counter-revolutionaries met secretly in London in November 1917 with
Tsarist General Germonius to:

"struggle against all elements advocating separate peace... help those elements
in Russia who are against a separate peace."

(Public Record Office: Foreign Office, 371/3020.)

The capitalists began supporting all elements who were against a separate peace.

One such "element" was Trotsky.

The Brest-Litovsk treaty was almost sabotaged by Trotsky; which would have lost
Russia and lost the revolution. But the Soviets wanted peace at any price in
order to save the revolution.

Against the "Left Wing Communists" - the ultra-left - who demanded continuation
of the war; Lenin's Decree on Peace appealed to the warring countries for an
immediate just and democratic peace. This was supported by a majority of votes
at the Bolsheviks' 7th Congress and gave the new Republic of Soviets time to
build a workers' and peasants' Red Army.

Incidentally; it was also decided by a majority vote at this, 7th, Congress, in
March 1918, to rename the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party to the Russian
Communist Party (Bolsheviks). This was to express the party's ultimate aim -
Communism. Later Congresses renamed the Party: The All Union Communist Party
(Bolsheviks) in 1925, and : The Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1952.

A second Soviet delegation, now without Trotsky, met Germany at Brest-Litovsk in
March 1918. Germany now also demanded Finland, Poland, the Caucasus, and
crippling Russian indemnities of gold, wheat, oil, coal and minerals. Thus one
third of Russia's crop area, half her industry, and 62 million people fell to
Germany. Again, what was originally Russian of these territories later rejoined
the USSR at the Second World War.

Lenin informed the British Government's agent in Russia Bruce Lockhart that
Russia would resist Germany if the Western Allies assisted. There was no
response.

"It was the Anglo - French and the the American bourgeoisie who refused to
accept our proposal; it was they who even refused to talk to us about a general
peace."

(Lenin, Letter to American Workers,)

The Soviets were forced to ratify the Brest-Litovsk Treaty on March 24 1918.

"Under present conditions, the Soviet Government of the Russian Republic, being
left to its own forces, is unable to withstand the armed onrush of German
imperialism, and is compelled for the sake of revolutionary Russia, to accept
the conditions put before it."

(All Russia Congress of Soviets, March 24 1918.)

"The price of the blood of our workers and soldiers is too high for us; we shall
pay you businessmen a heavy tribute as the price of peace; ...to preserve the
lives of our workers and peasants."

(Lenin, to William Bullitt, head of secret information department of the US
delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, March 1919.)

The essential and true nature of the Russian Revolution and the Brest-Litovsk
peace, so falsified and distorted by most Western accounts, is adequately
summarised by Maxim Litvinov, appointed Soviet Minister to Britain but at that
time unrecognised by the British Government, when under intense silence and
thunderous applause, he addressed the British Labour Party Congress as a
fraternal delegate in January 1918:

"I am the representative of no ordinary Government. For the first time the
working classes have attained supreme power in one of the largest States in the
world. The significance of events in Russia has been beclouded by the war and by
mis-representations. I appeal to British workers to disabuse their minds of the
notion that the Bolsheviks have usurped power like a band of conspirators.

They have carried through the revolution in the most approved style and with the
help of the people and in spite of the hatred of the capitalists and the
sabotage of the officials of the Tsarist regime.

The revolution was not only against the Tsar and his regime, but against allied
capitalists. The Russian toilers wanted peace as well as freedom and social
reforms. They revolted, not against the unsuccessful conduct of the war, but
against the war itself. They revolted against the war by revolting against its
authors and advocates.

...The first Provisional Governments frustrated the policy of the masses and
were swept away, and the government was transferred to the Soviets.

Had the experience of the revolution justified itself? The answer was, in one
word - Brest-Litovsk. Even if peace didn't result from the negotiations, a
revolution in Germany and perhaps somewhere else might come within the range of
immediate possibilities.

We have placed the German people with two alternatives. Either their Government
will accept the Russian democratic formula, or they will continue the war
avowedly for territorial conquest..

Will the German people continue to shed their blood to encourage their Junkers
[landed aristocracy, B.M.] and capitalists? I think there can be only one
answer. Already we hear the rumblings of a storm coming from Austria and
Hungary. It will, no doubt, also spread over Germany.

Not only have the war aims of the Central Powers been exposed. The statesmen of
the allied countries have been forced into the open and surely these exposures
must have their effect on the minds of the workers of the world."

(Maxim Litvinov, fraternal delegate to the British Labour Party Conference,
Nottingham, Jan 22 1918..) (1)

(1)See:Pat and Zelda Coates "A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations." Lawrence and
Wishart. London 1944.



School and college history, economics and business studies teaching and books do
not contain any of this information.



All the material and information I have presented here is readily available to
historians, writers, journalists, teachers, educators and syllabus publishers.
Although I have spent many hundreds of hours gathering it all together, I did
not have to look very far to find any of it.



When as a trainee history lecturer, it was suggested I take the class on a trip
to the Tower of London and then set them an essay on what life was like for a
soldier in King Charles' Army centuries ago. Very useful knowledge that! A
sociology of the past perhaps? But certainly not history in its most important
sense; unless history is to mean anything old or 'interesting' that you can do
in evening classes, like antiques, flower arranging or basket weaving. When
instead I taught real history, learning from the past in order to change the
future, the collective life-experience of humanity, I was got rid of. The head
of the history department complained that the students had remarked that I made
them think; which the head of history had probably never done in a lifetime of
teaching. I ended up washing and cleaning and emptying human surgical waste in a
hospital.



Unless teachers learn to be brave and intellectually honest (difficult when they
have a mortgage and bills to pay), future historical, social and economic
education and popular 'knowledge' will also not refer to the US or British
history and continuing complicity in global plunder, exploitation, domination
and control, wars of aggrandisement and acquisition, causing the deaths and
devastation of the homes and lands of millions of people - the thousands of
children under the age of two who will die tonight through simple lack of food,
clean water, medicine and education - the untold millions of unnecessary deaths
among the overwhelming majority of humanity on this incredibly rich and abundant
and ultimately sustainable earth.



From Brian Mitchell. Evolution.



Responses and criticisms welcomed. Reply to my personal e-mail if you prefer. My
replies to criticisms will be posted.








"The most remarkable thing about the world is that you can understand it."
(Einstein.)

"They shouldn't be killing all the rhinos." (Kylie Minogue when asked (during
Apartheid) what she thought about the situation in South Africa.)

Einstein also said that the two most common elements in the universe are oxygen
and stupidity.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]